I came across the phrase 「脇を抜ける」in the 化物語 novel. I was very worried about what was happening to this poor girl’s armpits!
And then I found out it’s an aphorism meaning “to escape, especially to suddenly get out of a difficult situation”. Makes a lot more sense now.
“How are we gonna get out of this now?”
“Give me your armpit!”
“What!”
“Just give to me if you want to live!”
More generally, 抜ける as a transitive verb means “to go through, to pass through; to escape from a situation or location; to briefly leave your post” [*]; extracting things is 抜く.
[*] mix of senses from EDICT and Daijisen; the EDICT entry could arguably use beefing up with more transitive senses.
I won’t lie, when I read the title of this thread I also got quite concerned about what the contents might be.
Let’s say that I’m glad it’s just a vocab expression.