give someone line

English

Etymology

Referring to the use of a fishing line.

Verb

give someone line (third-person singular simple present gives someone line, present participle giving someone line, simple past gave someone line, past participle given someone line)

1. (fishing) To unreel more fishing line so that a hooked fish has more freedom to tire itself out.
   • 1862, Cyril Thornton, Conyers Lea:

     Give him LINE, boy (as the trout rushed down into the shallows); into the water, boy! the line's nearly run out; it's nowhere up to your knees. Watch him! draw the line up; gently! give him line; give him line—thought so! —I feared so, ' as the line, becoming entangled from drawing it up, snapped, and the fish dashed on blindly into the shallows and stranded.

2. (idiomatic, dated) To allow a person more or less liberty until it is convenient to stop or check him/her.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “give someone line”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)