get the nod
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to receive approval or permission
Literally: receive a nod of the head
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Palladium, which got the nod back in September 1991 when OSF announced the winning DME technologies, heralds from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Athena project, with support from DEC, HP and IBM.
That looks good for us … we should get the nod over hillsboro and/or newcastle.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “get the nod” mean?
to receive approval or permission Literally: receive a nod of the head
Is “get the nod” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.