Giving a concession that sounds like something significant and is likely to get accepted as such, but in reality you've given away nothing of value, or something that you would have had to include anyway.
Bill: I gave that treadmill to the guy that bought my car to get him to say yes.
Bob: But you were already planning to give that to charity.
Bill: Exactly. I gave him the sleeves out of my vest.
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)