Word.ws English Dictionary

turns the scale

turns the scale is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 turns the scale

What is turns the scale the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Turns the scale is the third-person singular simple present indicative of turn the scale.

Words near turns the scale in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turns 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.

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