turning 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