It’s extremely nuanced. ‘Light years ahead’ is correct since you are thinking about a race where one competitor is a long distance ahead of others. On the other hand, ‘light years away’ doesn’t make sense, since we think of achievements in terms of time needed, rather than distance.
tesseract@beehaw.org 5 months ago
It’s extremely nuanced. ‘Light years ahead’ is correct since you are thinking about a race where one competitor is a long distance ahead of others. On the other hand, ‘light years away’ doesn’t make sense, since we think of achievements in terms of time needed, rather than distance.
ji17br@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
You’ve never heard the term miles ahead?
Tommy is miles ahead of Timmy in math class.
Clearly not referring to distance but it absolutely makes sense.