Word.ws English Dictionary

turned the scale

turned the scale is the simple past and past participle of turn the scale.

Meaning of turn the scale

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To decide or determine a balanced situation.
    • Perhaps Charles Strickland's power and originality would scarcely have sufficed to turn the scale if the remarkable mythopoeic faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with impatience a story which disappointed all its craving for the extraordinary.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 1”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    tip the scales

Questions about turned the scale

What is turned the scale the simple past and past participle of?
Turned the scale is the simple past and past participle of turn the scale.

Words near turned the scale in the dictionary

  1. turned the knife
  2. turned the knife in the wound
  3. turned the other cheek
  4. turned the other way
  5. turned the page
  6. turned the scale
  7. turned the screw
  8. turned the screws
  9. turned the tables
  10. turned the tide
  11. turned the trick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turned the scale (page history and authors); turn 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “turned the scale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turned_the_scale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.