arm's length

Noun

Meaning

a distance sufficient to exclude intimacy

Hypernyms

Examples

But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest. Emily Brontë

Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to. Erich Maria Remarque

We started at once to dig our trenches, half of my platoon stepping forward abreast, the men being placed an arm's length apart. After laying their rifles down, barrels pointing to the enemy, a line was drawn behind the row of rifles and parallel to it. Fritz Kreisler

We still have community, but we don't seem to have local community. Even in a small town where you know your neighbors and your mother's down the street, they're not in arm's length. Helen Fisher

To suppress the grief, the pain, is to condemn oneself to a living death. Living fully means feeling fully; it means becoming completely one with what you are experiencing and not holding it at arm's length. Philip Kapleau

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me? Ralph Waldo Emerson

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