Quote
1. Quote - Listen to the quote and guess what the slang means.
“When you’re on Twitter, everyone has free rein. I remember one time someone said, ‘Your forehead is so big, you can land an airplane on it.’”
- Singer and actress Vanessa Williams, speaking about online insults. (Us Weekly)
Definition
1. Definition - Study the definition.
ability to do whatever you want
2. Use - Learn how the slang is used.
Have you ever gone horseback riding? Most people use equipment to help keep themselves, and their horse, safe. There’s the saddle to give you a comfortable place to sit, and the bridle to give you a place to attach the reins. The reins are straps that you can pull on to get your horse to stop. When you let the reins go loose, the horse continues forward until you pull on the reins again.
To give free rein, then, is to allow someone or something to continue without your trying to stop it. You might not even be able to stop it if you tried. For example, a mother might tell her son that he has to keep his toys neat in most of the rooms of the house, but he can have free rein over his bedroom. Or you might say that the swim team uses the pool until six o’clock, but the public has free rein after that.
Vanessa Williams notes that there’s something out there these days that gives people free rein: the Internet. Services like Twitter allow users to say whatever they want, whenever they want. It’s not even worth it to try to pull on the reins and get the comments and insults to stop, because it just wouldn’t be possible.
Do you think it’s positive or negative to have forums like the Internet where people can have free rein?
Examples
1. Examples - Hear some example sentences.
“When my husband’s away, I have free rein over the house and can leave my stuff wherever I want.”
“She’s always interrupting me. It’s like she thinks she has free rein over the conversation just because she has a loud voice.”
“I’ll let you make dinner if you give me free rein over dessert.”
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