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Free rein   /fri reɪn/   Listen
Free rein

noun
1.
The removal of constraints.  Synonym: play.  "They gave full play to the artist's talent"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Free rein" Quotes from Famous Books



... centralized responsibility and control in political matters was paralleled in the military field. Nothing illustrates this principle better than the centralization of the American Expeditionary Force under the absolute and unquestioned command of General Pershing. The latter was given free rein. The jealousies which so weakened the Union armies during the first years of the Civil War were ruthlessly repressed. No generals were sent to France of whom he did not approve. When the Allies threatened to appeal to Washington over Pershing's ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... deciding the case in her favour. As they were leaving Chambers, Fairfax's lawyer had said to his client:—"Well, we've saved everything but honour." And Fairfax had replied:—"You would have saved that, too, if I had given you a free rein." From which it may be inferred that Fairfax was something of a ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... small as possible. She had not dared move, but Casimir did not even turn his eyes in her direction, and almost at once he went out, giving his arm to his uncle. Then she was able to give free rein to her thoughts. How severe M. Vulfran was with his nephew, but what a disagreeable, horrid youth was that nephew! If they had any affection for one another it certainly was not apparent. Why was it? Why wasn't this nephew kind to his old uncle, who was blind ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot

... creature and all impersonal anxieties. If he wished for fame, power, wealth, it was that he might use them to the advantage of his friends, or for the reparation, in some degree, of his father's sin. But all the joy and all the melancholy in love give a free rein to egoism, and now that he had gained, as he believed, the desire of his eyes, the confused, tyrannical, inexplicable, triumphant selfishness dormant in him, as in all of us, began to assert its terrible power. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... great chair and sank into it, whilst we stood there, mute, regarding her. For myself, it was with difficulty that I repressed the burning things that rose to my lips. Had I given free rein to my tongue, I had made of it a whip of scorpions. And my anger sprang not from the things she said to me, but from what she said to that saintly man who held out a hand to help me out of the morass of sin in which I was being sunk. That ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini


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