Word.ws English Dictionary

give them an inch and they'll take an ell

give them an inch and they'll take an ell is the archaic 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

  1. 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 them an inch and they'll take an ell

What is give them an inch and they'll take an ell the archaic form of?
Give them an inch and they'll take an ell is the archaic form of give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

Words near give them an inch and they'll take an ell in the dictionary

  1. give the stem
  2. give the store away
  3. give the time of day
  4. give the word
  5. give them an inch and they'll take a mile
  6. give them an inch and they'll take an ell
  7. give thought
  8. give toco
  9. give tongue
  10. give two fucks
  11. give two hoots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give them an inch and they'll take an ell (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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Cite this entry: “give them an inch and they'll take an ell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/give_them_an_inch_and_they%27ll_take_an_ell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.