give them an inch and they'll take a mile
give them an inch and they'll take a mile proverb: granting someone a limited concession will encourage them to take greater liberties.
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
- If you had a horse or a small article of property taken, you would recover it by law; not for the value of the article itself, but if you give an aggressor an inch, he will take a mile.1846, George C. Clark, Means Vs. Anti-Means; or the Trial of the Baptist Church Case in the Rush Circuit Court, 2nd corrected edition, Rushville, Ind., published 1895, page 75
give them an inch and they'll take a mile meaning in Indonesian and Thai
give them an inch and they'll take a mile in Indonesian
- a limited concession will encourage someone to take greater liberties
- seperti Belanda minta tanah
give them an inch and they'll take a mile in Thai
- a limited concession will encourage someone to take greater liberties
- ได้คืบจะเอาศอก dâai-kʉ̂ʉp-jà-ao-sɔ̀ɔk
Synonyms of give them an inch and they'll take a mile
Forms of give them an inch and they'll take a mile
| alternative form | give someone an inch and someone will take a mile |
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Origin of give them an inch and they'll take a mile
A modified variant of the expression give them an inch and they'll take an ell, adjusted for the obsolescence of the ell due to the standardization of the imperial system.
Words formed from give them an inch and they'll take a mile
Questions about give them an inch and they'll take a mile
- What does give them an inch and they'll take a mile mean?
- Give them an inch and they'll take a mile means granting someone a limited concession will encourage them to take greater liberties.
- What is give them an inch and they'll take a mile in Indonesian?
- Give them an inch and they'll take a mile in Indonesian is seperti Belanda minta tanah. See Give them an inch and they'll take a mile meaning in Indonesian.
- What part of speech is give them an inch and they'll take a mile?
- Give them an inch and they'll take a mile is a proverb.
Words near give them an inch and they'll take a mile in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Cite this entry: “give them an inch and they'll take a mile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/give_them_an_inch_and_they%27ll_take_a_mile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.