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The camel's nose is a
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...
for a situation where the permitting of a small, seemingly innocuous act will open the door for larger, clearly undesirable actions.


History

The phrase is not commonly used in the 21st century. According to Geoffrey Nunberg, the image entered the English language in the middle of the 19th century. An early example is a
fable Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a parti ...
printed in 1858 in which an
Arab Arabs (,  , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
miller allows a
camel A camel (from and () from Ancient Semitic: ''gāmāl'') is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. Camels have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provid ...
to stick its nose into his bedroom, then other parts of its body, until the camel is entirely inside and refuses to leave. Lydia Sigourney wrote another version, a widely reprinted poem for children, in which the camel enters a shop because the workman does not forbid it at any stage. The 1858 example above says, "The Arabs repeat a fable", and Sigourney says in a footnote, "To illustrate the danger of the first approach of evil habit, the Arabs have a proverb, 'Beware of the camel's nose. Nunberg could not find an Arab source for the saying, however, and suspected it was a Victorian invention. An early citation with a tent is "The camel in the Arabian tale begged and received permission to insert his nose into the desert tent." By 1878, the expression was familiar enough that part of the story could be left unstated. "It is the humble petition of the camel, who only asks that he may put his nose into the traveler's tent. It is so pitiful, so modest, that we must needs relent and grant it." A 1909 essay by John B. West, founder of the West legal classification system, used the metaphor to describe the difficulty of trying to insert an otherwise innocuous set of facts into a rigid legal system:
three excellent digesters [] spent an entire day in disagreeing as to whether seal fishery cases should be classified under the topic 'Fish' or that of 'Game' .... It is the old story of the camel's head in the tent. What seems at first a plausible pretext for forcing some novel case or new principle into a topic or subdivision to which it does not naturally belong, leads to hopeless confusion.
In a 1915 book of fables by Horace Scudder, the story titled ''The Arab and His Camel'' ends with the
moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...
: "It is a wise rule to resist ''the beginnings of evil''." U.S. Senator
Barry Goldwater Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and major general in the United States Air Force, Air Force Reserve who served as a United States senator from 1953 to 1965 and 1969 to 1987, and was the Re ...
used the metaphor in expressing his opposition to the National Defense Education Act in 1958:
This bill and the foregoing remarks of the majority remind me of an old Arabian proverb: "If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow." If adopted, the legislation will mark the inception of aid, supervision, and ultimately control of education in this country by the federal authorities.
The phrase was used in ''Reed v. King'', 145 Cal.App.3d 261, 266, 193 Cal.Rptr. 130 (1983) "The paramount argument against an affirmative conclusion is it permits the camel's nose of unrestrained irrationality admission to the tent. If such an 'irrational' consideration is permitted as a basis of rescission the stability of all conveyances will be seriously undermined." The case in question involved a plaintiff suing because the defendant sold a house without telling them that the house's previous inhabitants had been brutally murdered 10 years earlier. In 2019, a version of the phrase was used by Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a concurring opinion addressing a coverage dispute among feuding liability insurers (''Steadfast Ins. Co. v. Greenwich Ins. Co.'', 2019 WI 6), noting that allowing a non-breaching insurer to recover its attorney's fees from a breaching insurer would abrogate the American Rule (each party is responsible for its own fees regardless of result) to such an extent that "once the camel's nose is in the tent, the rest will likely follow."


Related expressions

There are a number of other metaphors and expressions which refer to small changes leading to chains of events with undesirable or unexpected consequences, differing in nuances. ;English language *"Give them an inch; they'll take a mile." The original saying goes "Give them an inch, and they'll take an ell." *"Taking the piss." If someone takes the piss, they say or do something unreasonable. "''For them to do what they've done, I think they're taking the piss, really. You want me to have the kids on Friday night? You're taking the piss.''" *"The thin end of the wedge" * This concept was the premise of the 1985 children's book '' If You Give a Mouse a Cookie''. * "If you let the pig under the bed today, tomorrow it will demand to be on the bed" is a popular saying in Bulgarian culture that stems from a story about a pig begging its owner to be allowed to sleep under his bed for warmth, the owner's acquiescence having created in the pig the boldness the next day to now request permission to sleep ''on'' (rather than ''under'') the bed the following night. ;Other languages * In
Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the Cradle of civilization#Ancient China, world's earliest cultures, said to originate five thousand years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia called the Sinosphere as a whole ...
, the "inch-mile" saying corresponds to the '' chengyu'' (four-character expression) (), which is a quotation from the '' Book of Later Han'' about a Chinese general who took over Long (now
Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...
) only to pursue further southwards into Shu (now
Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...
). Another more similar corresponding ''chengyu'' is (), meaning "Gain an inch and ask for a yard." *In Danish, there is the expression ''når man rækker Fanden en lillefinger, tager han hele hånden'' ("When you give the Devil a littlefinger, he takes the whole hand"). * In Dutch, there is the expression ("If you give him a finger, he will take your whole hand"). * In Finnish, there is the expression ("If you offer the devil ven justa little finger, it takes the whole hand/arm"). * In Georgian, there is the expression: ("You let the hog louse on your foot, and it will crawl on the top of your head"). * In German, there is the expression ("If you give somebody the little finger, he will take your whole hand"). * In Greek, a similar expression is: ("Give the peasant freedom, and he will hop on your bed"). *In
Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
, there is the expression: उँगली पकड़ कर पहुँचा पकड़ना ("Give a finger, pull the wrist") * In Italian a similar proverb is ("If you give them a finger, they will take your arm"). * In Malay culture, the saying goes "diberi betis, hendakkan paha" (offering a calf, then wanting a thigh). * In Norwegian there is an expression: (A rolling snowball will be harder to stop). * In Romanian culture, there is the expression Give a finger, he takes your hand. * In Russian culture there is a similar phrase which literally translates as "offer him a finger, and he will bite a hand off up to the elbow". * In Polish, the "Give him a finger and he'll take the whole arm!" is increasingly replaced with an abbreviated form, and the reminder implicit: "Give him a finger...!" ** Another Polish proverb: ''Daj kurze grzędę, a ona "Wyżej siędę!"'' (Give the hen a perch, and she'll say "I'll roost somewhere (even) higher!"). * In Portuguese and Spanish, the correspondent to this idiom is ("You lend a hand, and they want the whole arm"), and ("you lend a hand, and they grab the elbow"). There is a
Mexican Spanish Mexican Spanish () is the variety of dialects and sociolects of the Spanish language spoken in Mexico and its bordering regions. Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers, more than double any other country in the world. Spanish is spo ...
variation in which the foot is involved: ("you lend them a hand, and they grab you by the foot"). *In Turkish, there is the expression "Elini verip kolunu kaptırmak" which can be translated as "give someone an inch, and he'll take a yard." * Vietnamese Expression - "Give them a dog, they want an elephant."


See also

* Boiling frog – the notion that gradual change tends to go unnoticed until it is too late, often discussed by drawing an analogy to a false story about what will allegedly happen to a frog in gradually warmed water * Butterfly effect * Creeping normality *
Domino effect A domino effect is the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a series of similar or related events, a form of chain reaction. The term is an analogy to a falling row of dominoes. It typically refers to a linked sequence of events ...
* Foot in the door – a persuasion technique * For Want of a Nail – the claim that large consequences may follow from inattention to small details * Slippery slope – an argument, sometimes fallacious * Taking the piss


References

{{Reflist Causality Metaphors referring to camels