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Comment by nytesky | Hacker News Reader

I always thought it was tow, like a tugboat towing something and keeping it aligned.

Instead it’s about foot races!

“ The phrase means “follow the rules or obey an authority.” “Tow the line” is a misspelling based on “toe” and “tow” sounding the same, but “tow the line” is always an error. The phrase comes from the idea of standing at the starting line before a race (i.e., getting as close as possible without overstepping the mark).”

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Interesting, but I'm going to stick with "tow the line" because it simply makes way more sense and is way more intuitive.

Hard disagree on that. The image of aligning your toes with a starting line is what makes sense. By contrast, while you may use a line to pull something behind you, it's never the line itself that you're towing.

Strictly speaking, 'toe the line' in this case doesn't make sense either. A runner 'toeing the line' is trying to get as close as possible without overstepping it. The analogy would be if Tim Cook was criticizing the CCP as much as he could without actually crossing them. But he's not doing that, or OP claims he isn't, and that he's doing the opposite, enthusiastically. So even if 'tow the line' is wrong in the sense that's not a recognized idiom, it's more right in the sense that the image of someone pulling weight for somebody else is more like what OP claims that Tim Cook is doing.

The runner crosses the line once the starting gun fires. See it as coming up to the line that one is expected to be at, rather than edging close to a border that one is expected not to overstep.

Ok, I still don't think it makes much sense. The line in a race is set up for fairness to the runners and spectators, not to advantage the authorities. So stepping up to the line doesn't serve the authorities unduly, which is the claim made against Tim Cook. Also, the runner does not have a more honorable alternative. Running in the bleachers doesn't serve him better in some way than running on the track from the starting line. Pulling a weight for someone else as in the image of 'towing the line' still fits better in this case.

A better idiom for your use case might be ‘carry water’. Saying Tim Cook carries water for the CCP would be to say he does the work of the CCP, equivalent to towing a load. However, I think this is a stronger phrase than what the original commenter intended.

Towing the line even has a delightful play on words, where you are towing around the lines out of whatever leaders mouth.

Towing the line, like you are helping to pull along the message. And towing the line like you are carrying around the lines of the message. It's too good to give up for some oddly abstracted analogy about running a race.

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