elbow room

Idioms  

1. Enough space to move about, as in Two hundred on the stage? There won't be any elbow room. This term alludes to having enough room to extend one's elbows. [Late 1500s]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

elbow room

First, there was Relax Row, and this week it announced plans to add a row of Economy Plus seats with more elbow room on 50 new Airbus A321XLR planes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

The shift will likely provide some extra elbow room in the carpool lanes and possibly inspire more drivers to carpool once again, experts say.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2025

Yeah, you don’t have a lot of elbow room.

From Slate ● Dec. 10, 2023

But conventional accelerators require plenty of elbow room -- kilometers -- making them expensive and limiting their presence to a handful of national labs and universities.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 27, 2023

Not so long ago H. Wayne Huizenga, the billionaire founder of Blockbuster and owner of the Miami Dolphins, wanted more elbow room and bought a neighboring house for $2.5 million.

From "Class Matters" by The New York Times

Related Words

• breathing space
• latitude