Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

Gladly.

Even before it was light, we were a good distance along the highway.

Michael Hamm                   Since mid-September of 2003,
AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis   I've been erasing too much UBE.
msh210@math.wustl.edu          Of a reply, then, if you have been cheated,
http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ Likely your mail's by mistake been deleted.

} Will you paraphrase " well out on the highway" with other words ?
}
} Before it was even light, we were well out on the highway. l I could
} heel the uninterrupted roll of the wheels.

Well on our way, beyond getting up to speed and turning the directional
signals off.  Settled in for the long haul.  Farther than "just barely".

But "heel", you say?  Maybe "hear" or "feel"?

In our last episode,
<3FF7A802.1060809@r5.dion.ne.jp>,
the lovely and talented masahiko
broadcast on alt.usage.english:

"Well" here means "fully" or "completely."  Not only have they reached
the highway, but also they have traveled "out" on it far enough to
be "well out on the highway," or in other words, beyond the outskirts
of the city.  You might translate this "far out on the highway,"
but how far one has to go to be "well out on the highway" depends upon
one's cultural context.  In parts of the American West, you might
not be "well out on the highway" so long as you could see any house
or other building.  In other places, you might consider yourself
"well out on the highway" if you were seeing cattle, sheep, or
cultivated lands.  "Well out on the highway," might be 10, 50,
or 100 kilometers, depending upon the place and the speaker's
cultural expectations.

I'm pretty sure this should be "hear" the uninterrupted roll of wheels.
(If it is "heel," it is an unusual figure.)  This sentence gives us
a hint of what the speaker means by "well out on highway."  It
means far enough that there is no more stopping and starting owing
to urban traffic.