free rein

Related to free rein: give free rein

free rein

Complete freedom to do what one wants or chooses. Can you believe the boss gave me free rein on this project? Finally, I can present a campaign with my own vision!
See also: free, rein
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

(a) free rein

complete freedom of action or expression.
The image here is of loosening grip on the reins of a horse, allowing it to choose its own course and pace, in contrast to the greater control implied by the next idiom.
See also: free, rein
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • free hand
  • a free hand
  • have a free hand
  • get a free hand
  • get, have, etc. a free hand
  • give (one) full rein
  • give/allow somebody/something free/full rein
  • allow
  • allow (one) free rein
  • give (one) a free hand
References in periodicals archive
Ralph Beckett: trains Free Rein ??Ed Vaughan runners at Newcastle are well worth a second look Vaughan has sent only eight runners on the long journey north from his Newmarket yard in the last five seasons and four of them won, including the only juvenile.
It is highly unlikely the United Nations will be able to implement workable measures to accomplish that goal...there is no choice but to give the United States and Britain a free rein in governing postwar Iraq.
Then, the ministries would have free rein and would not have to be concerned with government regulations and separation of church and state.
Give him free rein with a company and he has the potential to lead that troupe into the national spotlight.
Man, it's terrible on open hills because it's pretty much free rein everywhere."
Competent and secure CEOs often tolerate having a Dennis Rodman or Latrell Sprewell around and giving them a certain amount of free rein to express their unique talents.
Given free rein on her own film, Lambart announced herself in a blaze of blues and reds.
Most middle-class whites, and many blacks, saw the New York riots as just that: young men giving free rein to their worst impulses.
At the same time, however, Purkiss welcomes the prospect of a popular, non-academic feminist history that abandons "masculine" empiricism altogether and gives free rein to feminist imagination.
This quandary is cleverly solved in the bizarre notion of "loving the sinner but not the sin," which seems to give free rein to many bigots.
It's not that they lack good hearts but, rather than give free rein to their imaginations and take some well-considered, innovative course of action that might improve the quality of their residents' lives, their first instinct is to ask, "Will I be cited?" "Will I be sued?" "Will I lose my license, or my job?" This unreasonable aversion to risk has an enormous social cost - in programs not implemented, in lessons not learned, in the quality of lives forever diminished.
Now, a study indicates that privileged tissues may not have been granted free rein by the immune system's lymphocytes after all.
He suspects that the rise of the university in its modern form during the closing decades of the nineteenth century gave such free rein to the forces of professionalization and specialization that it may have done less to advance learning than to narrow intellectual horizons and weaken public culture.
The GAO has free rein to audit the System, subject to explicit exemptions for deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window credit operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits and open market operations; transactions made under the direction of the FOMC; transactions with, or for, foreign central banks and governmental entities; and discussions or communications among or between members of the Board and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to these matters and transactions.
Clinton residents argue that the rezoning, using hypothetical environmental impact, gives Silverstein free rein to build a project that differs from the conjectural developments.