arm's length

adjective

not closely or intimately connected or associated; distant; remote: an arm's-length relationship.

Origin:
1645–55

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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World English Dictionary

arm's-length

—*adj*
1.	lacking intimacy or friendliness, esp when possessing some special connection, such as previous closeness: we now have an arm's-length relationship
2.	(of commercial transactions) in accordance with market values, disregarding any connection such as common ownership of the companies involved

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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00:10

Arm's length is always a great word to know.

So is doohickey. Does it mean:

a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

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"As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's-length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring,—scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair's-breadth further for respect of power,—while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame."

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