system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does "he was all but confused" mean "he was extremely confused", but if you take the sequence of words literally, it means " he was everything EXCEPT for confused"?

I never understood this English form. I'm using the word "confused" as filler, but any adjective might do there.
I dont understand why when someone is "all but XXX" they are understood to be "extremely XXX."
Didn't we just say they were ALL BUT that thing?
gpt
The phrase "all but X" is an idiom, and idioms should not be read literally. Throwing a book at someone doesn't literally mean throwing a book. If you miss the boat ordering a cake for a birthday, you haven't literally missed a boat.

The phrase "all but X" means that practically, things are so close to being X that they may as well be X. For example, the "match was all but decided" means that the end result from the match is almost certain.

If, however, you had a basket of eggs and broke all but one, this is a literal construction and you can replace the word "but" with "except" and the phrase still makes sense.