Here's an idiom for you to try out this week in your daily speaking practice!
If a student is late for school because they said the bus was late, and they are not normally late so the teacher doesn’t tell them off, it means the teacher is giving them 'the benefit of the doubt.'
‘To give someone the benefit of the doubt’ means to believe their reason for doing something wrong; maybe it’s the first time they’ve made a mistake so you’re not going to punish them or tell them off for doing something wrong.
Or it might be somebody who usually makes mistakes or causes trouble but this time you believe that they’re telling the truth, so you ‘give them the benefit of the doubt’ and let it go.
To use it for different people you simply change the direct pronoun:
Give me the benefit of the doubt
Give you the benefit of the doubt
Give him the benefit of the doubt
Give her the benefit of the doubt
Give us the benefit of the doubt
Give them the benefit of the doubt
You mainly use it when something bad has happened to you or something connected to you and you’re deciding whether to punish the person or not.
Let’s look at some examples:
Well I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time but it can’t happen again.
It’s totally unlike her to behave in this way, she's not a nasty girl, I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt.
Luckily they gave me the benefit of the doubt and let me off for being late, I'm normally always on time.
This phrase isn’t particularly informal or formal but because you use it when you’re deciding the outcome of something bad or negative it suggests that you are in a position of authority over the other person so if you’re using this in the workplace you wouldn’t use it with your boss but you might use it with people who work for you, who you are in charge of. I’d say it’s most common use is teachers at school when dealing with pupils misbehaving.
Commentaires