Near passerine? How can you be near passerine?

Near passerine? How can you be near passerine? Doesn't that just make you non-passerine?

I know very little about bird lineages, and I recently read an article about the replacement of non-passerine birds in Europe with passerine birds. I was trying to determine what passerine versus non-passerine birds were, generally, but when I looked up woodpeckers I found that they, and several other lineages, were known also as "near passerines." My search led me to citations that stated that near passerines are a group that are believed to be related to true passerines due primarily to ecological similarities. It is thus far undetermined whether or not all near passerines are related to true passerines, but new molecular data apparently makes it appear unlikely. So, that is, briefly, a near passerine.