Meaning
A small, seemingly harmless concession that is said to make larger, unwanted encroachments inevitable - the thin end of the wedge. The image argues that whoever admits the first modest step, the nose, will soon lose the whole tent, which is why it is a staple of slippery-slope argument. Inherently argumentative - using it asserts a slippery-slope claim rather than describing one, so it suits debate more than neutral analysis. Often shortened to the camel's nose. Regional use: American English; understood elsewhere but strongest in US political and legal discourse.
Origin
Behind it lies a fable in which an Arab - in later tellings a bedouin - lets his camel put just its nose into the tent on a cold night; stage by stage the camel begs in its head, neck, and shoulders until it fills the tent and turns the owner out. English versions appear from the mid-nineteenth century: an 1858 children's fable about an Arab miller and his camel, and Lydia Sigourney's 1860 poem, whose footnote claims the Arabs have a proverb about the camel's nose. The linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, who traced the tale, dated its entry into English to the mid-nineteenth century but found no actual Arabic source, suspecting the Arab-proverb framing was a Victorian invention. The New York Times was invoking it familiarly by 1875 and 1878, and its modern home is American political and legal rhetoric: Senator Barry Goldwater recited it as an old Arabian proverb in 1958 against federal aid to education, and courts have repeated the formula since.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- if the camel once gets his nose in the tent
- the camel's head in the tent
- the camel's nose in the tent
Usage Examples
- Letting the committee approve one banner is the camel's nose under the tent; soon every shopfront will be draped in advertising.
- Opponents called the waiver harmless, but the governor saw the camel's nose and vetoed it before it could claim the whole tent.
- Allowing late submissions just this once is the camel's nose; by midterm the entire class will expect extensions.