Learn English – Feed out the rope

phrase-meaning

I have question about this phrase (read in book "Gooldfinch" by Donna Tarrt):

"… a scholarship student – all sorts of special allowances and delayed deadlines and second and third chances: feeding out the rope, over a matter of months, until I’d managed to lower myself into a very deep hole."

What's mean "feeding out the rope"?.

Best Answer

This a mountaineering term:

if you feed out the rope, you let go some lengths of it, you make sure it is slack rather than taut, so that the person at the other end of the rope has freedom of movement.

Here, freedom to fall further down, to sink even deeper into whatever it was he was sinking in… and putting the blame on the people who gave him this freedom when they should have realised he was going to misuse it! The freedom of movement should allow the person to climb higher up of course, not to slip back down.

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