Idiom
camel's nose
Meaning
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.
Examples
“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.”
Examples
simple
“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.”
contextual
“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.”
complex
“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.”
Origin
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.
Key words
Related idioms
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