u-turn
u-turn is the alternative letter-case form of U-turn.
Noun capitalized: U-turn
U-turn (plural U-turns)
- A turn in a vehicle carried out by driving in a semicircle in order to travel in the opposite direction.
- What's disappointing about all this doom and gloom is that the franchise has made the kind of whiplashing U-turn you might see in its car-chase sequences.2025 May 14, Nicholas Barber, “'A miserable, apocalyptic tract': Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning could be 'the feel-bad film of the summer”, in BBC, archived from the original on 23 Jul 2025
- Synonyms:
- uey
- A reversal of policy or opinion.
- The government have done a U-turn and are now supporting greater European integration instead of opposing it.
- Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, announced a major U-turn on the government’s climate commitments last month, pushing back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers.2023 October 10, Senay Boztas, “Frans Timmermans urges European left to unite against right’s climate backlash”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 23 Dec 2023
- Synonyms:
- about-face, flipflop, flip-flop, backflip, turnaround, turnabout, row-back
Verb capitalized: U-turn
U-turn (third-person singular simple present U-turns, present participle U-turning, simple past and past participle U-turned)
- To turn a vehicle in a semicircle so as to face the opposite direction (∩)).
- Synonyms:
- hang a uey, bang a uey, flip a bitch, chuck a uey
- To shift from one opinion or decision to its opposite.
- She made the case for cutting taxes as “the right thing to do morally and economically”, despite having just U-turned over her decision to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.2022 October 5, Rowena Mason, “Liz Truss promises ‘growth, growth and growth’ in protest-hit speech”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 02 Apr 2023
- Synonyms:
- flip, flop, flip-flop, flipflop, turn around
Synonyms of u-turn
5 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of u-turn
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | u-turns |
| plural | U-turns |
| alternative form | u-turn |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | U-turns |
| present participle | U-turning |
| past participle | U-turned |
| past | U-turned |
Origin of u-turn
From U + turn, from the similarity to the shape of the letter U.
Words formed from u-turn
Questions about u-turn
- What does u-turn mean?
- U-turn means a turn in a vehicle carried out by driving in a semicircle in order to travel in the opposite direction.
- What is u-turn the alternative letter-case form of?
- U-turn is the alternative letter-case form of U-turn.
- What part of speech is u-turn?
- U-turn can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of u-turn?
- The plural of u-turn is u-turns.
Words near u-turn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: u-turn (page history and authors); U-turn (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-PerfectSoundWhatever-U-turn.wav.
Cite this entry: “u-turn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/u-turn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.