word-meaning
The country’s main industry federation said the business community welcomed the result.
So have most newspapers, one calling it “a day of hope for all Egyptians”.
Source: Euronews.com, Sisi Secures Crushing Win in Egypt Presidential Vote
Is this grammatical? Is it an expression? What does it mean?
[. . .] a bullet that will transfer its energy quickly onto its target. This is where soft-point and hollow-point projectiles come into their own. They are designed to "mushroom" or expand when they hit any resistance ([e.g.] animal flesh). This expansion makes the diameter of the bullet increase. This is done for two reasons: When travelling through flesh, this expansion slows the bullet down quicker than a bullet that doesn't mushroom ([e.g.] full-metal-jacketed bullet), and causes the energy to transfer in a shorter time span, causing greater shock. And the other reason is that when the bullet increases in diameter, it leaves a wider wound channel in the animal, causing greater damage and a quicker kill.
Source: huntingclubshoalhaven.org, Which Bullets?
Basically, some ammunition is designed so that it deforms throughout impact, rather than retaining its point and passing cleanly through. This is actually designed to make the bullet go slow in the body, stopping sooner (imparting more energy at once) and harmfully widening the impact channel.
This is the sense intended:
mushroom
VERB
2 Form a shape resembling that of a mushroom:
the grenade mushroomed into red fire as it hit the hillside→2.1 (Of a bullet) expand and flatten on reaching its target:
these are high-performance bullets which mushroom upon impact
Why is it,
Even some of the winner’s supporters fear Egypt’s divisions will be far from healed.
and not these:
*Even some of the winner’s supporters fear Egypt’s divisions will be far from heal, or
*Even some of the winner’s supporters fear Egypt’s divisions will be far from be healed.
* denotes ungrammatical sentences
This is basically about participles--those verbs in -ing and -ed forms, which could be used like adjectives.
To provide you a little background, let's consider:
She is beautiful. -- This means she is beautiful.
She is far from beautiful. -- This means she is not beautiful.
This is obvious because beautiful is an adjective. Now, let's try to explain a girl who just came back from a visit to a town called Springfield.
She is missing Springfield. -- She is thinking of the town, and might want to be there again.
She is far from missing Springfield. -- This sounds like she doesn't like the town much.
What if we write miss instead of missing?
?She is miss Springfield! -- Read it aloud and it might sound like she just won a beauty contest!
?She is far from miss Springfield! -- Isn't she beautiful enough to win the contest?
?She will be miss Springfield! -- Same as ?She is miss Springfield, but in the future.
?She will be far from miss Springfield! -- Same as ?She will be miss Springfield, but in the future.
? denotes questionable sentences
Of course, those are just funny interpretations, but I think they show why we shouldn't write will be far from heal or will be far from be healed really well. As you appear to know, heal is a verb.
To choose between will be far from healed and will be far from healing (which is incorrect for your sentence), I'd like to suggest reading about "present participles" and "past participles" in your grammar books. To help you a little bit, here is my crash course for participles.
If you think it makes sense to rephrase your sentence in the active voice, use the present participle form, which is the -ing form.
If you think it makes sense to rephrase your sentence in the passive voice, use the past participle form, which is the -ed form.
For example,
Who's the fat man sitting in the corner?
Why do we use 'present participle' (the -ing form)?
Because that fat man "is sitting in the corner".Most of the people invited to the party didn't turn up.
Why do we use 'past participle' (the -ed form)?
Because those people "were invited to the party".)
Now, back to your sentence,
Even some of the winner’s supporters fear Egypt’s divisions will be far from healed.
Why do we use 'past participle' (the -ed form)?
Because what those supporters fear is: Egypt’s divisions "will be far from healed."
Best Answer
Here, so is a pro-form. It's used instead of repeating an earlier verb phrase ("welcomed the result"), and it adds the meaning "too". It also triggers Subject-Auxiliary Inversion.
To paraphrase it, we can remove so, undo the inversion, put in the missing constituent, and add too to preserve the meaning:
Now we've paraphrased your sentence. (Well, the first half, anyway.)