Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
turn the scale en · VERB
Pronunciation
Meanings
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(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:
Forms
Deriveds
turn the scales at
Synonyms
tip the scales