Meaning
To alter your opinion, attitude or stance on something, usually in response to new circumstances, pressure or self-interest. Typically implies that the shift is convenient or coerced rather than principled, and it is often used critically or ironically about someone who reverses course under pressure. Usually disparaging or ironic: it suggests the person changed under pressure or for advantage, unlike change of heart, which implies sincere emotional change. Common in the past tense to mark a visible reversal. Sing a different tune screened clean as a variant of this entry. Regional use: British in origin; now standard across all English varieties.
Origin
A music metaphor: your tune is your song, and altering it means altering what you say. The noun tune is attested from the early fourteenth century as an unexplained variant of tone, with the OED's earliest evidence from before 1387 (Trevisa). Ammer's Dictionary of Cliches calls the analogy very old, citing John Gower around 1394 - now schalt thou singe an other song - and states that the exact phrase appears in a Robin Hood ballad of about 1600. Debunked: Shakespeare is sometimes credited with the phrase, but a full-text search of the complete works (Globe edition, Project Gutenberg) finds no use of the idiom or of any change-tune construction - only 'change of fortune' surfaces - so that attribution does not hold. The OED's own dated quotation evidence sits behind its paywall.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- change of tune
- change one's tune
- sing a different tune
Usage Examples
- The mayor was all praise for the transit union until election season; now that the drivers have endorsed her rival, she has changed her tune.
- He swore he would never work weekends, but a raise and a corner office quickly changed his tune.
- Critics who dismissed the small telecom as a hobby project changed their tune after it signed two million subscribers.