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give pause



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Idioms and Phrases

Cause one to hesitate, as in The high monthly installment payments gave me pause , or, as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet (3:1): “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ... Must give us pause.” [c. 1600]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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give overgive rein to