give someone an inch and someone will take a mile
give someone an inch and someone will take a mile is the alternative form of give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
Meaning of give them an inch and they'll take a mile
Proverb
give them an inch and they'll take a mile
- Granting someone a limited concession will encourage them to take greater liberties.
- O the tyranny of aristocracy!—give it a furlong, and it will take a mile,—a veto stopped me once from going to Brussels: and now comes a Lettre de cachet ordering me to Paris.1843, John Bowring, editor, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, volume 10, Edinburgh: William Tait, pages 279–280
Questions about give someone an inch and someone will take a mile
- What is give someone an inch and someone will take a mile the alternative form of?
- Give someone an inch and someone will take a mile is the alternative form of give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
Words near give someone an inch and someone will take a mile in the dictionary
- give someone a ring
- give someone a shout
- give someone a speaking to
- give someone an earful
- give someone an inch and he'll take a yard
- give someone an inch and someone will take a mile
- give someone ass cancer
- give someone beans
- give someone butt cancer
- give someone enough rope
- give someone enough rope and they'll hang themself
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: give someone an inch and someone will take a mile (page history and authors); give them an inch and they'll take a mile (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-give someone an inch and someone will take a mile.ogg.
Cite this entry: “give someone an inch and someone will take a mile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/give_someone_an_inch_and_someone_will_take_a_mile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.