Meaning of move the goalposts | Babel Free

Definitions

To alter the terms of an agreement or an agreed target, or the rules of a negotiation while it is ongoing, especially in an unfair way.

idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“This is a Government that meets its economic targets and does not move the goalposts.”

“We were given a moving date, and an exchange date, but the buyers kept moving the goalposts and giving us a later date.”

“The tempo at which events are moving, the technological changes and the new developments being encountered on all sides sometimes gives the impression that the objectives or goal posts are constantly being moved.”

“The conflict between being a lady and having a career was crystallized when I was in high school. It seemed as if my mother kept moving the goalposts around.”

“The common thread to these four problems is the question of wha can reasonably be inferred about the covert processes, as opposed to the overt acts, of other organisms if we and they cannot communicate directly through verbal disclosure. […] No one baulks at applying the same standards of inference to other cultures of our species, but it is still easy to move the goalposts when another species is involved[…].”

“Sooner or later we have to have rules, and we have to know that they are not going to change, for people to have business plans developed and so that they can go out and raise capital and stick with their business model. But if there is this constant uncertainty that when the Commission changes, or when they have another rule tha they are going to move the goal posts again, nobody is going to want to have anything to do with this field.”

“He had to put down a deposit of sixty grand to secure the theatre and just as he was about to sign the cheque, American Equity moved the goalposts yet again.”

“When a practice harmfully moves the goalposts, but does not violate freedom to trade, the ban on "unfair methods of competition" in Section 5 of the FTC Act might be a better fit than the ban on restraints of trade in the Sherman Act.”

CEFR level