toe the line

1. Also, toe the mark. Meet a standard, abide by the rules, as in The new director will make us toe the line, I'm sure, or At daycare Brian has to toe the mark, but at home his mother's quite lenient. This idiom refers to runners in a race placing their toes on the starting line and not moving until the starting signal. Its figurative use dates from the early 1800s.

Example Sentences

And when people like Kimmel don’t toe the line, they — or the institutions that employ them — should be threatened, intimidated and silenced.

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Johnson has toed the line in recent weeks, calling for “maximum transparency” around the Epstein case while doing his best to tamp down the uproar over recent actions by the DOJ.

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That said, Aurienne does toe the line between aloof and arrogantly unlikable.

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“Fascism is good for business if you toe the line. Popular podcasts became tribal and divisive years ago,” he wrote.

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They successfully toe the line between staying faithful to the established formula and the need to innovate just enough to keep it modern, while not diluting the charm with vapid pop-culture references.

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