get (one) off the hook

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get (one) off the hook

1. To help one to avoid punishment or culpability for some wrongdoing. He's the best lawyer in the business. If anyone can get you off the hook for murder, he can. Can you please tell Mom that you broke the vase and get me off the hook?
2. To free one from the responsibility of some task; to help one to avoid some obligation or duty. Thank you for getting me off the hook for Saturday—I was dreading having to babysit at 6 AM on my day off!
See also: get, hook, off
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

get somebody off the ˈhook

(informal) help somebody to avoid punishment, etc: You’re going to need a very clever lawyer to get you off the hook.
See also: get, hook, off, somebody
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

off the hook, to get/to be let

To escape from some difficulty. The analogy is to throwing a fish one has caught back into the water, saving its life. The term on the hook goes back to the seventeenth century; the current cliché dates only from the mid-1800s. Anthony Trollope used it (The Small House at Allington, 1864): “Poor Caudle . . . he’s hooked, and he’ll never get himself off the hook again.”
See also: get, let, off, to
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer
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References in periodicals archive ?
The key issue as we debate climate change in the House of Commons is that one of the reasons the government gets off the hook in this judgement is on the basis that the Paris Agreement is not enshrined in UK law.
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If you think of this report as purely an economic document, it's strange that this group of countries gets off the hook. Japan, India and South Korea -- which is scolded for its "excessively strong external position" -- merely get a warning to try harder in the future.
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Colin McGregor, Paisley, said: "I don't understand why Levein gets off the hook. If Craig Brown was in charge he would have been slaughtered for not qualifying from a poor group."
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"The difference between a district that pays a huge settlement and one that gets off the hook is that they took the situation seriously from the start and didn't just hope it would go away," says Hutton.
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Establish monthly quotas for these kinds of stories and make it clear that no reporter gets off the hook, even when real news is unfolding on his/her beat.
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Thus, the everyone concerned always gets off the hook as no individual is properly held to account, disciplined or dismissed in this sickening and endemic culture that has existed in our council-run social work services for decades.
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The returning officer, Lin Homer, gets off the hook by a narrow margin.
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In my opinion, this God gets off the hook far too easily.
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"Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly) is the bad one, and I'm the one who gets off the hook." Though belonging to different classes, Pam and Doug, both 15, share something important in common: Neither cares about family status or wealth.
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Oct 2015: Seems to drive his studs into the chest of Liverpool's Martin Skrtel but gets off the hook.
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Mrs Liddell said: "No one gets off the hook where mis-selling of personal pensions may have occurred."
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