camel's nose
A situation where the permitting of some small act will lead to a larger undesirable act or circumstance.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Don't let them start, or it will be the camel's nose.”
“I worry that this small budget increase is just the camel's nose.”
“He refuses to sign the contract because he fears the camel's nose.”
“If we allow this small change now, we risk the camel's nose leading to total policy failure later.”
“Giving the employees a half-day today feels like the camel's nose because they might expect every Friday afternoon off from now on.”
“The neighbors think letting you park one car on the grass is the camel's nose for turning the yard into a parking lot.”
“The committee feared that approving this minor exception would serve as the camel's nose, inevitably inviting a flood of far more radical and damaging requests.”
The root phrase is usually claimed to be a saying of Arabs or Middle Eastern cultures, roughly as follows: : Do not allow a camel to put his nose under the edge of your tent, for soon you will have a camel in your tent.
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banana nose
A large, unusually long nose.
- 02
button nose
A nose with a small size and a relatively flat, round shape, usually considered to be dainty or cute in appearance.
- 03
camel through the eye of a needle
Hyperbole to illustrate something that is impossible to do or to make happen.
- 04
count noses
To count people one at a time.
- 05
cut off one's nose to spite one's face
To harm oneself as a result of attempting to harm an adversary.
- 06
give someone a bloody nose
To defeat or frustrate someone, but without doing any permanent damage.
- 07
I suppose
[Cockney slang]nose
- 08
keep one's nose clean
To stay out of trouble, especially by avoiding unlawful behavior.
Last updated August 10, 2026