Word.ws English Dictionary

turns of the screw

turns of the screw is the plural of turn of the screw.

Meaning of turn of the screw

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

Questions about turns of the screw

What is turns of the screw the plural of?
Turns of the screw is the plural of turn of the screw.

Words near turns of the screw in the dictionary

  1. turns of duty
  2. turns of events
  3. turns of foot
  4. turns of phrase
  5. turns of the centuries
  6. turns of the screw
  7. turns of the years
  8. turns of words
  9. turns off
  10. turns on
  11. turns on its head

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turns of the screw (page history and authors); 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: “turns of the screw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turns_of_the_screw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.