English · Idiom Candidate

turn the corner

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Start to recover or improve after a difficult period

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

bắt đầu phục hồi sau giai đoạn khó khăn

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: change direction at a corner

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The Church of England is behind the Baptist Union in halting its decline: the Baptists turned the corner between 1980 and 1985, and thereafter saw a slight growth in membership.

He turned a difficult corner skilfully.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “turn the corner” mean?

Start to recover or improve after a difficult period Literally: change direction at a corner

Is “turn the corner” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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