at arm's length

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Idioms and Phrases

At a distance, avoiding intimacy or familiarity, as in Bill hated seeing his colleagues outside the office, preferring to keep all of them at arm's length , or She was friendly only when he was safely at arm's length . Now often used with the verb keep , this term for distancing oneself from a person, organization, or issue originated as at arm's end but developed its current form by the mid-1600s.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

The detective’s preference for operating solo and keeping people at arm’s length is a constant.

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Regardless of the era or in whose skin the character shows up, the detective’s preference for operating solo and keeping people at arm’s length is a constant.

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He also defended the idea of quangos – the term used to describe publicly funded organisations at arm's length from the government.

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The company was not set up in Sheen's name and he had to be at "arm's length from it".

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“It’s better to stay alone or at arm’s length,” he told The Times in 1994.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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