1. almost
It almost scared me not to see you online for a whole day.
We're almost there.
It's possible to study English with a native speaker almost anywhere in the world.
Almost the only time a fat man loses his temper is when he has been deprived of his food.
By the time he retires, my father will have worked for almost thirty years.
It is almost impossible to learn a foreign language in a short time.
The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
It was almost a decade ago, on May 8th, 1980, that Mount St. Helens erupted.
When he reached the station, the train had already left almost half an hour before.
A chance to do as we please, especially to do as little hard work as possible, is a secret desire of almost everybody.
You had better not go out now. It's almost 11.
If you were to fall from that bridge, it would be almost impossible to rescue you.
The gun went off while he was cleaning it, and the bullet almost struck his wife.
Last year, I spent so much time by myself that I almost forgot how to communicate effectively with others.
The bridge between Denmark and Sweden is almost five miles long.
2. nearly
When I ask people what they regret most about high school, they nearly all say the same thing: that they wasted so much time.
Hailing a cab in Manhattan at 5:00 p.m. is nearly impossible.
Nearly three.
Somehow, a nearly bankrupt third-party publisher flashed the new Castlevania game onto the memory incompletely. As a result, an entire generation of kids in Macon, Georgia unanimously condemned it as "Simon Does Nothing but Fall into a Bottomless Pit."
The most instinctive act of nearly every creature is to protect its young, and with humans, this response persists for a lifetime.
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
Svetlana was a little too merciful with the feeder mice down at the pet store. The snakes nearly starved!
He's offended at the slightest thing, he takes exception to nearly everything we say to him.
The treatment's acceptability plummeted by nearly 96% that year after researchers discovered disfiguring side effects.
I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
One of my Japanese teachers said "honya honya" instead of "blah blah." My ensuing laughter nearly gave me a hernia.
Nearly all siheyuans had their main buildings and gates facing south for better lighting, so a majority of hutongs run from east to west.
I tumbled on the truth by the merest accident, when I'd pretty nearly chucked the whole job.