TURNING POINT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Turning point

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/tˈərnɪŋ pɔɪnt/ Listen

noun

Turning n.

The act of one who, or that which, turns; also, a winding; a bending course; a flexure; a meander. "Through paths and turnings often trod by day."

The place of a turn; an angle or corner, as of a road. "It is preached at every turning."

Deviation from the way or proper course.

Turnery, or the shaping of solid substances into various forms by means of a lathe and cutting tools.

pl. The pieces, or chips, detached in the process of turning from the material turned; usually used in the plural.

(Mil.) A maneuver by which an enemy or a position is turned.

Turning and boring mill, a kind of lathe having a vertical spindle and horizontal face plate, for turning and boring large work.

Turning bridge. See the Note under Drawbridge.

Turning engine, an engine lathe.

Turning lathe, a lathe used by turners to shape their work.

Turning pair. See the Note under Pair, n.

Turning point, the point upon which a question turns, and which decides a case.

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Etymology of 'Turning point'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Turning point" Quotes from Famous Books

... child who had never known anything but that monotony. It was not, this little epoch of time only three weeks long, to count for anything. It was to be a holiday and no more. And lo! with that inexplicableness, that unforeseenness which is so curious a quality of human life, it had become a turning point of existence, the pivot perhaps upon which Chatty's being might hang. Mrs. Warrender was not so decided as Chatty. She saw nothing final in the parting. She was able to imagine that secondary causes, something ...

— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... glance at the list of performances. A beginning was made on the old lines. The familiar operas of the Italian list were brought forward with great rapidity, but not one of them drew a paying house. The turning point came with the arrival of M. Lassalle on January 15th. Messrs. Abbey and Grau then recognized that salvation for their undertaking lay in one course only, which was to give operas of large dimensions, and in each case employ the three popular men who had taken the place in the ...

— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... time he reached the shelter which would protect him from the fungus mist, a turning point had come in the battle. The ape-men had closed in on the girls, were swarming about them, and the mist balls had almost ceased to fly. But the thing which gave Kirby hope was that the apes were not attempting ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... (Here the theosophist has more in common with the evolutionist than one or two of the preceding paragraphs would seem to indicate.) If we follow the figure of the wheel our present plane, the last and lowest of them all, is really the turning point of the wheel; now it begins to turn back upon that from which it descended, and according to Theosophy our practical human task is so to avail ourselves of its upward movement as to be carried back with it toward the high planes ...

— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... the Germans was in itself of tremendous significance; but the historic effect was greater, and will grow in importance with the passage of time, for it is a fact, unperceived by onlooking nations at the moment, that it was the turning point of the war; and that the turning was accomplished by troops of a nation that hated war and was supposed to be incapable of military development; and that these troops had met and whipped the choicest troops of a power that above all things was military, that had assumed proprietary ...

— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

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