Word.ws English Dictionary

turn of the screw

turn of the screw noun: one step in a gradual imposition of restrictions.

Noun

turn of the screw (plural turns of the screw)

  1. (idiomatic) One step in a gradual imposition of restrictions.
    • There is every chance that as far as the government's budget cutting goes, the next turn of the screw will see the SRC squeezed, despite the fact that the council has, quite rightly, been spared from the worst of the earlier cuts.1980, New Scientist, volume 88, number 1226, page 348

Forms of turn of the screw

pluralturns of the screw

Questions about turn of the screw

What does turn of the screw mean?
Turn of the screw means one step in a gradual imposition of restrictions.
What part of speech is turn of the screw?
Turn of the screw is a noun.
What is the plural of turn of the screw?
The plural of turn of the screw is turns of the screw.

Words near turn of the screw in the dictionary

  1. turn of mind
  2. turn of pace
  3. turn of phrase
  4. turn of speed
  5. turn of the century
  6. turn of the screw
  7. turn of the year
  8. turn of words
  9. turn off
  10. turn on
  11. turn on its head

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turn of the screw (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: “turn of the screw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turn_of_the_screw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.