turn on a dime

1. 1.

   have a small turning radius

   “My little subcompact car turns on a dime!”

   Broaderturn

   driving

Questions about turn on a dime

What does turn on a dime mean?

turn on a dime means "have a small turning radius".

Is turn on a dime a common word?

turn on a dime is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.