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show ankle

verb

Etymology

Probably an allusion to the flirtatious practice by some young women, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, of raising a long skirt sufficiently to reveal a bare ankle but no more than that.

Definitions

  1. To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse…

    To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse interest.

    • "He figures that to do so, he'll have to be able to show a little ankle, to give some idea of new positions the United States is prepared to take."
    • No one expects Cuomo to declare his candidacy tonight But Carduff said "we expect him to show some ankle".
    • Microsoft showed some ankle and then some with advanced tools, database and server features in the latest builds of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for show ankle. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA