English · Idiom Candidate

toe the line

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

to conform to rules or expectations

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

tuân thủ quy tắc hoặc kỳ vọng

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: stand with toes on a line

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Both were villages with large numbers of Hinkley workers and which, a few years before, could have been relied on to toe the company line.

But you can never expect Horowitz to toe the party line which is why, in the end, he succeeded in making so many first - rate recordings.

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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Topics: Legs

Common questions

What does “toe the line” mean?

to conform to rules or expectations Literally: stand with toes on a line

Is “toe the line” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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