take liberties

Idioms  

1. Behave improperly or disrespectfully; also, make unwanted sexual advances. For example, He doesn't allow staff members to take liberties, such as calling clients by their first names , or She decided that if Jack tried to take liberties with her she would go straight home . This idiom uses liberties in the sense of “an overstepping of propriety,” and thus differs markedly from take the liberty of . [c. 1700]

2. Make a statement or take an action not warranted by the facts or circumstances, as in Their book takes liberties with the historical record .

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Example Sentences

They can take liberties: A Meta executive posted that her OpenClaw bots began deleting her inbox despite instructions to seek confirmation before acting.

From The Wall Street Journal

They can take liberties: A Meta executive posted that her OpenClaw bots began deleting her inbox despite instructing them to seek confirmation before acting.

From The Wall Street Journal

A consistent knock on the team is that there’s no response when other teams take liberties.

From Seattle Times

Velázquez could take liberties with his portraits of little people and jesters because they were neither members of the royal family nor nobility.

From Washington Post

Directly after The Slaughterhouse Cases, the court began to interpret the idea that liberty could not be taken away without due process to mean that the government couldn’t take liberties away unreasonably — and hence substantive due process was born.

From Washington Post