turn the screw
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to increase pressure or tension on someone
Literally: to turn a screw tighter
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
But midway through the first half, with England for once turning the screw, Rory Underwood was denied a try by Denis McBride's crunching tackle that wrenched the ball from the flying winger's grasp.
This would in turn lead to an increase in their demand for imports of $18 billion a year, one third of which would be spent in the US.
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 screw” mean?
to increase pressure or tension on someone Literally: to turn a screw tighter
Is “turn the screw” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.