phrase

• Exert strong pressure on someone.

  ‘the White House attempted to influence the vote by tightening the international screws on Managua’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Governments could have chosen to ease the pressure, but successive Labor and Liberal governments instead turned the screws.’
  • ‘Kiltegan were still in there, if only with an outside chance as the second half got underway but Castletown lost no time in turning the screws.’
  • ‘With affluent urbanites pushing prices up, and second-homeowners turning the screw, how can young people ever afford houses of their own?’
  • ‘It was when news finally became a profit center that management tightened the financial screws on the correspondents.’
  • ‘It seems now the screws have been turned on the web portal.’
  • ‘With his assassination, the screw was turned once more.’
  • ‘Unbanned and unbowed she may have been, but promoters now started to turn the financial screw on Jones.’
  • ‘Unless they want no leverage, which is what they have now in the middle of a fiscal year, they will wait until May or so to start turning the real screws.’
  • ‘Their aim was to tighten the economic screws and step up military provocations against in order to precipitate complete capitulation.’
  • ‘But in the long term, there's an inevitable logic to the screws being tightened.’