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cover one's ass

Idioms  

  1. Also,. 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.

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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