English · Idiom Candidate

turn the tables

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To reverse a situation, gaining the upper hand

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

đảo ngược tình huống, chiếm ưu thế

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to turn the tables

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

While he might have dismissed her, Vitor appeared to find it disconcerting that she should turn the tables and dismiss him.

Here childhood is redolent with sexual power, ‘ turning the tables’ on the usually dominant figure of the father.

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 tables” mean?

To reverse a situation, gaining the upper hand Literally: to turn the tables

Is “turn the tables” formal or informal?

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

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