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Let off the hook

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To release someone from responsibility, blame, or an obligation; to excuse someone from facing the consequences of their actions.

Detailed Definition
From fishing, where letting off the hook means releasing a caught fish, this idiom describes the act of releasing another from accountability. In poetry, it raises questions of justice, mercy, and the ethics of forgiveness—when release from consequences is grace and when it is evasion. Poets invoke it in works about complicity, forgiveness, and the relationship between accountability and mercy, exploring what it costs both the person released and the person who releases them. The fishing metaphor—the hook, the struggle, the release—is tactile and immediate, connecting abstract moral questions to the physical sensation of escape from a painful hold, and the mixed emotions that attend both catching and freeing.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about forgiveness — the decision to release another from the consequences of what they did — might use let off the hook to examine the ethics of that release, what it costs the one who forgives, what it gives the one forgiven; In a political poem about accountability, to let off the hook is the failure of justice — the powerful who escape consequence because those with the authority to hold them accountable lack the will; A poem about self-forgiveness might describe the difficulty of letting oneself off the hook — the internalized judge's refusal to release even when the external world has long since moved on; In a poem about a parent's relationship with a difficult child, to let off the hook is both the generous impulse and the failure of consequence — the poem examining whether love is best expressed through accountability or through release; The fishing metaphor — the struggle, the capture, the decision to return the fish to the water — suits nature poems that literalize the idiom before extending into the ethical register; A poem about the relationship between mercy and justice might use let off the hook as its organizing question: when is release grace and when is it the abdication of the responsibility that genuine care requires?
Additional Notes
This idiom means release from blame or duty, and its fishing image is useful in poetry. A person “on the hook” is caught, suspended, or accountable; being let off restores movement. It can apply to guilt, promises, debts, punishment, or emotional obligation. Related imagery includes lines, bait, escape, mercy, and unfinished justice.
Also Known As
Excuse Release from blame Off the hook
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