Word.ws English Dictionary

turn the tide

turn the tide verb: to undergo a change or reversal of a general trend.

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 undergo a change or reversal of a general trend.
    • 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.1962 February, “No Talent on the Railways?”, in Modern Railways, page 74
    • Images captured by the photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths in Vietnam helped turn the tide of public opinion against the war.2008 March 21, Owen Bowcott, “The man who captured the human cost of conflict”, in The Guardian

Forms of turn the tide

third-person singular presentturns the tide
present participleturning the tide
past participleturned the tide
pastturned the tide

Questions about turn the tide

What does turn the tide mean?
Turn the tide means to undergo a change or reversal of a general trend.
What part of speech is turn the tide?
Turn the tide is a verb.
What is the past tense of turn the tide?
The past tense of turn the tide is turned the tide.

Words near turn the tide in the dictionary

  1. turn the scale
  2. turn the screw
  3. turn the screws
  4. turn the table
  5. turn the tables
  6. turn the tide
  7. turn the trick
  8. turn the turtle
  9. turn to
  10. turn to account
  11. turn to custard

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turn the tide (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-turn the tide.ogg.

Cite this entry: “turn the tide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turn_the_tide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.