English Language & Usage Asked on January 31, 2021
Whatever the reason, the fact that sharks are still around 400m years later suggests that a soft skeleton is a highly successful strategy, evolutionarily speaking. Yet it may also be a limited one. The swim bladders developed by bony fish to modulate their buoyancy would soon be co-opted for another purpose: transformed into a primitive set of lungs, they allowed their bearers to breathe air, and therefore to colonise the land. Given that inch, early terrestrial vertebrates took a few feet, as it were. The rest is history.
The boldened line is written figuratively, I think, so I’m quite puzzled over the meaning. If you can explain the last line to me, that’d be great.
It's a reference to the expression give someone an inch and they'll take a mile
Defined by the Cambridge dictionary as being
said about someone who has been given a small amount of power or freedom to do something, and then has tried to get a lot more
and by dictionary.com as
Make a small concession and they'll take advantage of you. For example, I told her she could borrow the car for one day and she's been gone a week—give an inch!
The latter website also says that the expression has its origin in or before the 16C with the reference
This expression, in slightly different form, was already a proverb in John Heywood's 1546 collection, “Give him an inch and he'll take an ell,” and is so well known it is often shortened (as in the example). The use of mile dates from about 1900.
The writer of the piece you quote is using a modified version of the "give them an inch" expression to say that early terrestrial vertebrates took the very slight advantage of being able to breathe air inefficiently and made it a slightly greater advantage which, in time, led to the development of land animals proper.
Answered by BoldBen on January 31, 2021
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