Word.ws English Dictionary

thumb on the scales

thumb on the scales is the alternative form of thumb on the scale.

Meaning of thumb on the scale

Noun

thumb on the scale (usually uncountable, plural thumbs on the scale or thumbs on the scales)

  1. (idiomatic, usually) An act of bias or a tactic for cheating which creates a situation that unfairly benefits one party involved in an interaction.
    • I'll try to give an impartial account without putting my thumb on the scale.1982, Emory A. Griffin, Getting Together, →ISBN, page 68

Forms of thumb on the scales

pluralthumbs on the scales

Questions about thumb on the scales

What is thumb on the scales the alternative form of?
Thumb on the scales is the alternative form of thumb on the scale.

Words near thumb on the scales in the dictionary

  1. thumb indexes
  2. thumb knot
  3. thumb knots
  4. Thumb Master
  5. thumb on the scale
  6. thumb on the scales
  7. thumb one's nose
  8. thumb piano
  9. thumb pianos
  10. thumb position
  11. thumb positions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thumb on the scales (page history and authors); thumb on the scale (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “thumb on the scales.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thumb_on_the_scales. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.