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enough rope, give someone

Idioms  

  1. Allow someone to continue on a course and then suffer its consequences. For example, The auditor knew something was wrong but decided to give the chief accountant enough rope. This expression, a shortening of enough rope to hang oneself, was already proverbial in John Ray's English Proverbs (1678).

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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