nearly any

[joham]

One of my dictionaries compiled by some of China's professors of English says 'nearly' mustn't be used before 'any'. But I searched the BNC, CAE and Time CAE, and found a lot of sentences with 'nearly any'. So could we say 'nearly any' is as good as 'almost any'? And could we say 'nearly like...'?


These sentences come from CAE:
Green is so common before our eyes in nearly any garden that we almost forget it exists.
The coach says it's nearly like snow.

Could I ask native English teachers to help me please? Thank you very much.

 

[Anglika]

One of my dictionaries compiled by some of China's professors of English says 'nearly' mustn't be used before 'any'. But I searched the BNC, CAE and Time CAE, and found a lot of sentences with 'nearly any'. So could we say 'nearly any' is as good as 'almost any'? And could we say 'nearly like...'?


These sentences come from CAE:
Green is so common before our eyes in nearly any garden that we almost forget it exists.
The coach says it's nearly like snow.

Could I ask native English teachers to help me please? Thank you very much.

"nearly any" is a perfectly acceptable collocation, and so is "nearly like" in the right context..

Your sentence "The coach says it's nearly like snow" implies that there is something which resembles snow.

It's great, this park. It's nearly like being in the country again is saying something resembles something else.