I was watching Dracula with some friends once and they said: 'I thought Dracula only went for virgins?' 'No; that's Jesus'
^ Say what? One that another thread reminded me of it when people say "I know firsthand..." when it's really hearsay or observation of someone else's experience. A friend I'd been out of touch with for years posted on FB that she knew firsthand what it was like to have cancer, and I wrote back something like, "Oh, no, you, too? I'm so sorry to hear that." At which point she said it wasn't her, but a couple family members and friends. Oops, that's secondhand.
^^ That reminds me of a support group for "suicide survivors." What they mean, of course, is a group for family members and friends of people who've committed suicide. But the way it's phrased is an oxymoron.
I had a friend who knew his coworker was lying when he started a sentence with, "Can I be completely honest?"
"Near miss" always puzzled me, because, while I understand that they refer to objects passing so close they nearly hit, yet miss each other, the phrase itself is contradictory. I mean, literally, if something "nearly misses," that means it actually HIT.
Yet the same intention hides behind "With all due respect, ...". And then what you say is usually disrespectful. You are going to say something you know the other party won't like to hear, so you kind of prepare them for that. You can as well leave it away, but the end result usually is that it will come of as more offending. You say something that is important to you, but you know that the audience will take it the wrong way. The generalization that everything behind "I'm not racist/sexist/homophobe/etc..., but..." is automatically racist/sexist/homophobe/etc... is dangerous.
Actually, I don't think that "near miss" is grammatically incorrect or otherwise contradictory. By the way you're parsing it, it does seem so, but that's not the only way to parse it. A near miss is a miss that is near to the target. Therefore, it is a miss and it is near (and this expression is the key). So, it can be described as a near miss. It's just that that doesn't entail that it is equivalently describable as nearly a miss. Rather, it is near to the same thing it misses.
I have a friend that thinks he's funny when he makes fun of me for liking sci-fi. He emailed me (he's also deployed, but at a different camp) and said he watched Star Trek Into Darkness and he really liked it but wanted to yell "Use the force" during the Spock/Khan fight scene. I wrote back simply with "Don't be that guy."
It's actually very logical: it's both near and a miss not far away and obviously a miss - the stupidity of it comes from whomever put the two words together without thinking. I'm pretty sure there are lots of other examples of this sort...
What really irritates me is those booths where they sell grilled chicken. And bakeries. Every single one of them has a sign out "fresh chicken" / "fresh rolls". It's a matter of course they are fresh, damnit! That's what they are supposed to be. Nobody would buy them if they weren't. As for gigant fails/paradoxes: Somewhere online I found a photo of a poster advertizing a concert of the Altzheimer society. The poster claimed it'd be "an unforgettable evening".... I'll see if I can find the pic again.