"nearly man" meaning in English

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nearly men",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "nearly men"
      },
      "expansion": "nearly man (plural nearly men)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2000, David Brian Plummer, Lepus: The Story of a Hare, page 42",
          "text": "It was Harris's lot to be a nearly man: a man nearly educated, nearly employed, nearly criminal, but never really toppling the edges to be labelled. He had been nearly married, and lived at this time with a woman who had also seen better days […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Clive Gilson, Lorna Howarth, Songs of Bliss",
          "text": "Snuggle's is housed in what was once a mid-sixties estate pub, the perfect place to wind down a life as a nearly man. Suburban mediocrity writ large.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A man who fails to achieve the success or status that he might potentially have had."
      ],
      "id": "en-nearly_man-en-noun-yIxbvO2J"
    }
  ],
  "word": "nearly man"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nearly men",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "nearly men"
      },
      "expansion": "nearly man (plural nearly men)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2000, David Brian Plummer, Lepus: The Story of a Hare, page 42",
          "text": "It was Harris's lot to be a nearly man: a man nearly educated, nearly employed, nearly criminal, but never really toppling the edges to be labelled. He had been nearly married, and lived at this time with a woman who had also seen better days […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Clive Gilson, Lorna Howarth, Songs of Bliss",
          "text": "Snuggle's is housed in what was once a mid-sixties estate pub, the perfect place to wind down a life as a nearly man. Suburban mediocrity writ large.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A man who fails to achieve the success or status that he might potentially have had."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nearly man"
}