Photo credit: Reuters / Mario Anzuoni
Yesterday I went to see Woody Allen’s new film Blue Jasmine – it was my reward for a long working week, and I must say I wasn’t disappointed. I’ll try not to spoil too much of the plot, but the story is about the wife of an indecently rich guy who turned out to be a crook and got his fortune by stealing from others. She was often accused by her friends of ‘looking the other way‘ when he came up with dubious financial schemes and other illegal stuff.
While the meaning is pretty clear I don’t think I’ve come across this phrase before. However, there’s a good synonym – ‘to turn a blind eye to something‘.
Here are a few more examples:
– Apart from a few dogged journalists at the profile news magazine who exposed Waldheim and much else besides, Austria chose to look the other way. That’s a habit that is not an Austrian monopoly (The Guardian).
– If the international community looks the other way now, the violence will flare up again and the government of Sudan will go back to slaughter (The Guardian).
– European nations look the other way while Greek officials abuse migrants, particularly children, to keep their borders secure (The Guardian).
Confessions of the Linguistic Spy 