Turn the tables?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Turn the tables?

The first known example of the figurative use of the phrase in print is in Robert Sanderson’s XII sermons, 1634:

“Whosoever thou art that dost another wrong, do but turn the tables: imagine thy neighbour were now playing thy game, and thou his.”

See? For the tables to turn is, originally, to reverse the positions of adversaries. “The phrase is often used when the weaker position subsequently becomes dominant,” Phrase.org adds, helpfully.

I recall Tracy Chapman using this term in “Talkin’ about a Revolution”, a song I listened to a lot in the early 90s. She sang about rural folks talking about folks “standing in the welfare lines” or “wasting time in the unemployment lines” or “sitting around waiting for a promotion”… And, finally, “poor people gonna rise up, and get their share; poor people gonna rise up, and get what’s theirs… as finally the tables are starting to turn.”

Alright, here are media examples of people turning the tables on others:

1. There’s a particular urgency to the quest to find a drug effective against the brain tumors called glioblastomas. Because they’re a form of cancer that spreads quickly through the brain, surgery and radiation usually can’t get at all the cancerous cells. “We need more creative ways of fighting this disease,” says Gregory Riggins, a cancer researcher in the neurosurgery department of Johns Hopkins. Riggins is unleashing more than his share of creativity in the battle, helping to come up with an unexpected and promising strategy for a drug that could wipe out glioblastoma cells while leaving normal brain cells unscathed.