left turn

Noun

left turn (plural left turns)

1. (idiomatic) An unexpected change from the way things seemed to be going.
   • After a self-titled debut did well, Miracle took a surprising left turn with 2001's Keep It Country.2007, Roni Sarig, Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing, Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, →ISBN
   • Directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston, both veterans of the original Wreck-It Ralph team, also pull off some inventive, enlivening left turns that bring to mind the first film.2018 November 14, Jesse Hassenger, “Disney Goes Viral with an Ambitious, Overstuffed Wreck-It Ralph Sequel”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 21 Nov 2019
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see left, turn.

Interjection

1. A command to a soldier or other person who is marching: turn ninety degrees to your left!
   • The commanding officer then orders—Shoulder Arms!—Flanks, to the centre advance!—To the right and left turn!—Forward!1810, “Funeral Exercise”, in The Military Companion: Being a System of Company Discipline, Founded on the Regulations of Baron Steuben, Late Major-General and Inspector-General of the Army of the...
   • [I]f they each step off at the same instant, with the left foot, the sound of their feet will enable them to keep step and time, and march about in this form, as directed by the instructor, to the leading file, "right turn" or "left turn," without confusion.[1874], [Alfred Wilks Drayson], chapter XXI, in The Young Dragoon; or, Every Day Life of a Soldier. […], London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, […], →OCLC, page 187

Verb

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

1. (intransitive) To turn ninety degrees to one's left, especially in response to a military command while marching.
   • Let them but remember Lewis the eleventh, who to a Clarke of the Exchequer, that came to be Lord Treaſurer, and had (for his device) repreſented himſelfe ſitting upon fortunes wheele: told him, hee might doe well to faſten it with a good ſtrong nayle, left turning about it, it might bring him...[1641, Ben[jamin] Johnson [i.e., Ben Jonson], Timber: Or, Discoveries; Made vpon Men and Matter: […], London: [s.n.], →OCLC, pages 108–109
   • They left-turned, right-turned and about-turned, and the sergeant marched them up and down a bit on the asphalt and then silently on the grass, more to get them moving than anything else.1999, Leslie Thomas, chapter 1, in Other Times, London: Arrow Books, published 2011, →ISBN, page 3