As @dpworkin pointed out, it is not “to heat before heating” but to heat the oven prior to placing what you plan to cook in the oven. Sometimes if you place the food in the oven prior to bringing it up to the specified temperature, the consistency will change or it will be under-cooked because part of the recipe time was spent warming up the oven and not actually cooking the food.
My understanding is that near-miss has to do with the proximity of the two objects/events and the potential severity of the collision that did not happen. It is not, as the literal interpretation implies, that something “nearly missed” and actually collided, but that it nearly happened, did not and should be noted because it would have been very serious had the event occurred. It may have suffered from a telephone effect and originated from “Near Collision” or something.
Near miss is much more strange than preheat in my mind. Sort of like Inflammable/Flammable, it’s only seems awkward or wrong if you’re interpreting too literally or uninformed.