"move the needle" meaning in English

See move the needle in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

IPA: /muːv ðə niː.dəl/ Audio: En-au-move the needle.ogg [Australia] Forms: moves the needle [present, singular, third-person], moving the needle [participle, present], moved the needle [participle, past], moved the needle [past]
Etymology: From the indicator needle of a measuring instrument such as the speedometer. Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} move the needle (third-person singular simple present moves the needle, present participle moving the needle, simple past and past participle moved the needle)
  1. (idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: budge the needle
    Sense id: en-move_the_needle-en-verb-LK6XKZxX Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for move the needle meaning in English (2.6kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the indicator needle of a measuring instrument such as the speedometer.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "moves the needle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "moving the needle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "moved the needle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "moved the needle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "move the needle (third-person singular simple present moves the needle, present participle moving the needle, simple past and past participle moved the needle)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 July 28, Janice M. Horowitz, “Hot Stuff”, in Time",
          "text": "Think Red Hots are a taste challenge? Or the Atomic Fireball is the ultimate tongue torture? They barely move the needle for confectionery connoisseurs.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 August 9, Eric Lowitt, “To solve climate change, let's move beyond climate change”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "How does a participant in a sector, or an entire sector for that matter, move the needle on climate change?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 May 19, James B. Stewart, quoting Bill Smead, “Warren Buffett Stake Suggests Apple Is All Grown Up”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "[G]iven Apple’s huge success and its sheer magnitude, it needs a monstrous new product or enhancement of an existing product to move the needle on growth.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020, Anuj Adhiya, Growth Hacking For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons",
          "text": "A North Star Metric (NSM) allows everyone, irrespective of team status, to ask, “How is what I'm doing today helping move the needle on our NSM?”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To change a situation to a noticeable degree."
      ],
      "id": "en-move_the_needle-en-verb-LK6XKZxX",
      "links": [
        [
          "noticeable",
          "noticeable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "budge the needle"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/muːv ðə niː.dəl/"
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-move the needle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e3/En-au-move_the_needle.ogg/En-au-move_the_needle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/En-au-move_the_needle.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "move the needle"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the indicator needle of a measuring instrument such as the speedometer.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "moves the needle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "moving the needle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "moved the needle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "moved the needle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "move the needle (third-person singular simple present moves the needle, present participle moving the needle, simple past and past participle moved the needle)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 July 28, Janice M. Horowitz, “Hot Stuff”, in Time",
          "text": "Think Red Hots are a taste challenge? Or the Atomic Fireball is the ultimate tongue torture? They barely move the needle for confectionery connoisseurs.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 August 9, Eric Lowitt, “To solve climate change, let's move beyond climate change”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "How does a participant in a sector, or an entire sector for that matter, move the needle on climate change?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 May 19, James B. Stewart, quoting Bill Smead, “Warren Buffett Stake Suggests Apple Is All Grown Up”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "[G]iven Apple’s huge success and its sheer magnitude, it needs a monstrous new product or enhancement of an existing product to move the needle on growth.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020, Anuj Adhiya, Growth Hacking For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons",
          "text": "A North Star Metric (NSM) allows everyone, irrespective of team status, to ask, “How is what I'm doing today helping move the needle on our NSM?”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To change a situation to a noticeable degree."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "noticeable",
          "noticeable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "budge the needle"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/muːv ðə niː.dəl/"
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-move the needle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e3/En-au-move_the_needle.ogg/En-au-move_the_needle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/En-au-move_the_needle.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "move the needle"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.