open (up) daylight
v. phr.— «Strong and composed, she showed no outward sign of weakening under the pressure and when she decided to go for home, 1 190 metres from the finish, she quickly opened up daylight between herself and the Irish girl.» —“McKiernan’s silver lining” by Peter Byrne in Bailbao, Spain Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland) Mar. 29, 1993. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
After hearing our conversation about how dictionaries decide on a preferred pronunciation, and specifically about how to pronounce aioli, Vern from San Diego, California, wrote to say that a friend once made fun of him for pronouncing grimace with a...