Word.ws English Dictionary

wound back the clock

wound back the clock is the simple past and past participle 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 wound back the clock

What is wound back the clock the simple past and past participle of?
Wound back the clock is the simple past and past participle of wind back the clock.

Words near wound back the clock in the dictionary

  1. wouling
  2. wouls
  3. wound
  4. wound around one's little finger
  5. wound back
  6. wound back the clock
  7. wound cambium
  8. wound collecting
  9. wound collection
  10. wound collections
  11. wound collector

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wound 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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