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Think about it for a minute. If you're up a tree and have climbed out onto a limb, can you get down easily? No, you're stuck. If you're out on a limb, you've gotten into a situation where you can't get back out of it easily.
To "go out on a limb" basically means "I'm going to take a risk" or "I'm going to risk guessing". For example, if a hesitant person asks someone out, she is going out on a limb.
Children, especially boys, enjoy climbing trees, if given the opportunity. Climbing vertically and clinging to the main vertical part of the tree, its trunk, is much safer than moving away horizontally on a limb, or large branch of the tree. The farther out, away from the trunk, you go, the more likely the branch will bend lower because of your weight. If you were to venture out far enough, the limb would no longer be able to support the climber, and would break. Thus, we use this idiom to mean taking a path involving additional risks, straying from the much safer, central or conservative approach or path.
To 'go out on a limb' means to take a risk, or do something that is unfamiliar/uncomfortable to you.

ex. The boy went out on a limb and asked the girl out to the dance.
You mean "go out on a limb." It is not an idiom, but a figure of speech referring to the precarious position of a person out on the limb of a tree. To go out on a limb means to make a crucial guess or assertion, or leap to a conclusion, while acknowledging how easily one could be proven wrong, as a person out on a tree limb could be felled by simply cutting the limb off.

For example: The Party claims it will change in order to broaden its appeal, but let me go out a limb, here: it will only try to fool a more diverse population into voting for it.


I think it means that the person was brave or taking a chance. Like you're taking a chance if you walk out on a tree branch/limb, because it might snap.

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12y ago
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7y ago

The saying is either:

  • I am going out on a limb for you (ie crawling to the end of a dangerous tree branch)

or

  • I am sticking my neck out over this (sticking it out to the point where it is exposed and someone my chop my head off)
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9y ago

it means to take a chance or risk

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Q: What does it mean I am sticking my neck out on a limb?
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