turn against
turn against (idiom, phrasal verb)
/tɝːn əˈɡeɪnst/
Meaning
- To become hostile or opposed to someone, often after a period of support or friendship.
- stop supporting or being friendly toward someone or something.
- cause someone to stop being friendly toward someone or something.
- use something in a way that harms the person it belongs to.
- become hostile toward something once supported.
Synonyms: oppose; defect; rebel; alienate; prejudice; weaponize.
Example Sentences
- The citizens started to turn against the government after a series of broken promises.
- He felt completely alone when his closest friend decided to turn against
- Many friends eventually turn against the politician when his plans fail.
- She spread rumors to turn against her former boss.
- He inadvertently turned against himself by revealing too much.
- The public turned against the war after years of conflict.
Origin and History
The idiomatic expression “turn against” derives from the confluence of two longstanding elements in the English language: the verb turn, historically used in literal and figurative senses, and the preposition against, denoting opposition. Each component possesses deep roots in Old and Middle English, as well as cognate Germanic and Norman-French influences. Over centuries, the verb broadened semantically to encompass non-literal senses such as “to change one’s stance, attitude, or disposition,” thereby enabling the eventual fusion with against to signify an interpersonal or ideological reversal.
Earliest Documented Usage
Documented evidence places variants of the phrase meaning “turned against” in Middle English texts, generally dating to the late thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. These attestations appear in written manuscripts—poems, chronicles, translations—reflecting contexts of betrayal, shifting alliance, or loss of favor. Although precise dating remains challenging due to the fragmentary nature of surviving manuscripts, these medieval occurrences constitute the earliest confirmed lexical witness of the idiom’s core meaning.
Geographical and Cultural Origin
Given its roots in Middle English and the textual corpus in which it appears, the phrase most plausibly originated in what is now England. Both its lexical formation and early attestations emerge from the cultural and linguistic milieu of medieval England, where shifts of loyalty and political realignments were frequent themes in literature and historical narrative.
Mechanism of Idiomatic Formation
The phrase evolved through a natural process of semantic fusion: turn—already overloaded with figurative force—combined with the preposition against, resulting in an economical expression that visually and conceptually captures the motion of opposition. The idiomatic power of “turn against” lies in its vivid imagery (a figurative physical pivot) married to an abstract relational shift. It was this potency that facilitated its entrenchment in both literary and colloquial registers over time.
In summary, “turn against” emerged from the productive intersection of long-standing linguistic components within medieval English. Its earliest attestations in Middle English documents situate its origin in England. It gained traction as a fixed idiom through both its semantic aptness and frequent relevance in narratives of conflict, betrayal, and shifting allegiance.
Variants
- turn back on
- set against
- turncoat
Against, Phrasal Verbs, Support, Turn
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