Word.ws English Dictionary

winds back the clock

winds back the clock is the third-person singular simple present indicative of wind back the clock.

Meaning of wind back the clock

Verb

wind back the clock (third-person singular simple present winds back the clock, present participle winding back the clock, simple past and past participle wound back the clock)

  1. (figuratively, idiomatic) To return in time to an earlier period of history.
    • But wind the clock back some 60 years, and you would find that away from the South East of England, the North West once had the most extensive and varied selection of electric routes in the country.2021 February 24, John Crosse, “North West Electrics”, in RAIL, number 925, page 62
    Synonyms:
    turn back the clock, turn back time

Questions about winds back the clock

What is winds back the clock the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Winds back the clock is the third-person singular simple present indicative of wind back the clock.

Words near winds back the clock in the dictionary

  1. Windrusher
  2. Windrushers
  3. winds
  4. winds around one's little finger
  5. winds back
  6. winds back the clock
  7. winds down
  8. winds of change
  9. winds off
  10. winds one's neck in
  11. winds up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: winds back the clock (page history and authors); wind back the clock (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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