miles away

a mile away

Very easily. Always of something detected or observed. I can spot Paul from a mile away, just by the way he walks. After decades as an investigator, I can identify a con man a mile away.
See also: away, mile

miles away

Noticeably distracted, unfocused, or lost in thought. Of course you don't remember me saying that—you were a miles away the whole time! Are you even listening to me? You seem a miles away.
See also: away, mile
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

miles away

If someone is miles away, they are completely unaware of what is happening or of what someone is saying, because they are thinking deeply about something else. Sorry, I was miles away. Could you repeat that? You didn't hear a word I said, did you? You were miles away.
See also: away, mile
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • a mile away
  • a mile off
  • by a mile
  • run a mile
  • a private eye
  • private eye
  • cast
  • cast (some) light on (something)
  • cast/shed/throw light on something
  • throw an amount of light on
References in classic literature
On the road leading north from Manchester, in eastern Kentucky, to Booneville, twenty miles away, stood, in 1862, a wooden plantation house of a somewhat better quality than most of the dwellings in that region.
I had been found lying in the road several miles away from the house; but how I had escaped from it to get there I never knew.
A hundred moonlit miles away the Chiang crept to sea; O keeper of my heart, I came by Chiang's ford to thee.
Two of them were young students from a medical college a few miles away; the third was a gigantic negro known as Jess.
There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river.
Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind.
David's Hall alone, for the nearest village was two miles away. The station-master, on his return from escorting the young lady to her car, stared at this other passenger in some surprise.
The country boys came in from farms eight and ten miles away, and all the country girls were on the floor--Antonia and Lena and Tiny, and the Danish laundry girls and their friends.
There are no features to this land, no conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing so far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on earth dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away, where the sun sets in a blaze of colour flaming on a gold background, and the dark, low shores trend towards each other.
Ten miles away the island of Murea, like some high fastness of the Holy Grail, guarded its mystery.
Both of Mars' moons are vastly nearer her than is our moon to Earth; the nearer moon being but about five thousand miles distant, while the further is but little more than fourteen thousand miles away, against the nearly one-quarter million miles which separate us from our moon.
In the middle of a cyclone the air is generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it up higher and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone; and there it remained and was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.
The place is more than ten miles away from here, out in the country, and she says if she takes the train she should still have four miles to walk; and so weak as she is, and the baby only four weeks old, of course that would be impossible; and she wants to know if you would take her in your cab, and she promises to pay you faithfully, as she can get the money."
Due to the closure of the dementia units at Dolgellau and Pwllheli hospitals, my husband had to be sent to Llangefni hospital 65 miles away from home.
The 18-month row came to a head last month when it emerged that an ambulance travelled 10 miles to a boy choking to death while another crew was on a break three miles away.