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Origin documented
“In for a penny, in for a pound”
What it means
Having committed at all, commit fully.
Where it comes from
The force of the phrase depends on the gap: 240 pence to the pound. It is not a doubling but a two-hundred-and-fortyfold increase, which is a considerable escalation of the stakes.
How sure are we?
Recorded from the seventeenth century, originally about debt. If a creditor could have you arrested for a penny, the argument ran, the amount hardly mattered.