Meaning
Chiefly British: to turn or manoeuvre with great agility within a very small space, said of vehicles, dancers, footballers and the like; also of an abrupt change of mind, plan or mood. The image is of pivoting on a coin only a couple of centimetres across, that is, making the tightest turn physically imaginable. Informal and slightly old-fashioned in flavour since the coin left circulation, but still widely understood in Britain. Regional use: British English.
Origin
The idiom rests on the pre-decimal British sixpence, whose small diameter supplied the smallest possible pivot; 'stop on a sixpence' applies the same image to braking. Verifiable dating is easier for its American twin, 'turn on a dime': J. E. Lighter's Historical Dictionary of American Slang recorded a well-trained horse that 'turns on a five-cent piece' from 1881 (the quotation in fact appeared in Harper's by November 1879), and Ben Zimmer's research on the American Dialect Society's list supplies 'turn on a dime' from 1911 and 'stop on a dime' from 1921. Wikipedia's glossary of US/UK terms maps 'turn on a dime' and 'stop on a dime' directly onto the sixpence equivalents, the two coins being of similar size, and the British form is standardly treated as the older, coin-for-coin counterpart. No reliable first-use date for the sixpence wording itself was found in the sources checked, so its precise age is genuinely uncertain.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- on a sixpence
- stop on a sixpence
- turn on a dime
- turning on a sixpence
Usage Examples
- For a vehicle that size, the new van handles beautifully and will almost turn on a sixpence.
- The winger's greatest gift was the ability to turn on a sixpence inside a crowded penalty area.
- Public opinion can turn on a sixpence when an election is close, so the campaign team never rests.