show ankle

Probably an allusion to the flirtatious practice by some young women, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, of raising a long skirt sufficiently to reveal a bare ankle but no more than that.

• ""He figures that to do so, he'll have to be able to show a little ankle, to give some idea of new positions the United States is prepared to take.""
• "No one expects Cuomo to declare his candidacy tonight But Carduff said "we expect him to show some ankle"."
• "Microsoft showed some ankle and then some with advanced tools, database and server features in the latest builds of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006."
• "Now, it seems, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, is ready to show a little ankle by welcoming a proposal from Lord Forsyth's tax commission to abolish stamp duty on shares."
• "Sneijder showed some ankle last week with a veiled ‘come and get me’ plea that was promptly rebuffed by David Gill stating that the deal probably won’t go ahead now."

• come-on