turn the tide

turn the tide

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Verb

turn the tide (third-person singular simple present turns the tide, present participle turning the tide, simple past and past participle turned the tide)

1. (idiomatic) To make a change or reversal of a general trend.
   • 1962 February, “No Talent on the Railways?”, in Modern Railways, page 74:

     The general who turned the tide at Alamein was not, prior to his arrival in the Middle East, one of the very "top brass"; but he was a soldier, not a detergent manufacturer.

   • 2008 March 21, Owen Bowcott, "The man who captured the human cost of conflict", The Guardian:

     Images captured by the photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths in Vietnam helped turn the tide of public opinion against the war.

Translations

to make a change

Dutch: het tij keren Finnish: kääntää (fi), keikauttaa (fi) German: das Blatt wenden Icelandic: valda straumhvörfum, (turn the tide favorably) snúa í hag Latvian: mainīt notikumu gaitu

References

• “turn the tide”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.