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cover one's ass



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Idioms and Phrases

Also, cover one's hide or oneself . Make excuses or otherwise take action to avoid being blamed, punished, or harmed. For example, The first thing you learn in the army is to cover your ass , or Jane is ingenious at finding ways to cover her hide . The first phrase, considered vulgar slang, dates from the 1960s; the variants are more polite.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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