honor in the breach
- idiom
- Literature
:
honor en la violación
- Sometimes, there is honor in the breach rather than blindly following every order.
Examples
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The activists believed there was honor in the breach when protesting against unjust laws.
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She argued that true integrity may require finding honor in the breach of tradition.
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Some believe there is honor in the breach of unjust laws.
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The concept of honor in the breach is often debated.
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The activists believed that there was honor in the breach when standing up against unjust laws.
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In difficult situations, some argue that there is honor in the breach of rules that do not serve justice.
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Many scholars discuss the idea that honor in the breach can sometimes lead to positive social change.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The idiomatic sense 'there is honor in breaking a rule' is not transparently derivable from the literal meanings of 'honor' and 'breach' because the phrase 'in the breach' is an archaic, idiomatic construction whose syntax and pragmatic implication are not predictable. A B1 learner who knows the words would likely be confused or infer a literal spatial meaning rather than the culturally specific evaluative meaning, so this expression is opaque.
Etymology
Honor in the breach may come from a line in a play by Shakespeare, where a character says it is better to break a bad custom than to follow it. The image is of finding honor in a breach, that is, in a break of the rule, so today the phrase means 'there is honor in breaking a rule'.