English Idioms
Comprehensive resource for understanding and mastering English idioms
Light years away
Meaning
The idiom "light years away" is used to describe something that is extremely far or distant, so far that it seems like it's light-years away from where you are. It's a figurative way of saying that something is beyond your reach or too far to be considered reasonable or practical.
Usage
- It took us hours to get lost in the city, and we were miles away from home.
- That new technology seems light years away from anything we've ever used.
- It feels like a lifetime ago since I last saw her, it feels like she's light years away.
- That company that promised to deliver my package in two days never even delivered it, it was light years away from their promise.
- The stars I saw in the sky were light years away from us, but they still looked bright and beautiful.
Roots and History
The idiom "light years away" dates back to the early 1900s when the term "light year" was first introduced. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, which is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers or 5.88 trillion miles. The idiom uses this concept of a vast and unreachable distance to describe something that's beyond our comprehension or reach.
Synonyms in English
- Light-years away from being close.
- A world apart.
- Beyond what's possible.
- Out of this world.
- In another universe.
Synonyms in other languages
- En lo más lejos de mi mente (Spanish) - something that's too far from my mind to consider.
- Au-delà des bornes visibles (French) - beyond what you can see.
- Množina odvojena (Czech) - a group of things separated by a large distance.
- Daleko (Swedish) - far away.
- En tjernig okean (Danish) - in a deep and dark sea.