move the needle | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)To change a situation to anoticeabledegree.Synonym:budge the needle2002July 28, Janice M. Horowitz, “Hot Stuff”, inTime‎[1]:Think Red Hots are a taste challenge? Or the Atomic Fireball is the ultimate tongue torture? They barelymove the needlefor confectionery connoisseurs.2012August 9, Eric Lowitt, “To solve climate change, let's move beyond climate change”, inThe Guardian‎[2]:How does a participant in a sector, or an entire sector for that matter,move the needleon climate change?2016May 19, James B. Stewart, quoting Bill Smead, “Warren Buffett Stake Suggests Apple Is All Grown Up”, inThe New York Times‎[3],→ISSN:“[G]iven Apple’s huge success and its sheer magnitude, it needs a monstrous new product or enhancement of an existing product tomove the needleon growth.”2020, Anuj Adhiya,Growth Hacking For Dummies‎[4], John Wiley & Sons,→ISBN:A North Star Metric (NSM) allows everyone, irrespective of team status, to ask, “How is what I'm doing today helpingmove the needleon our NSM?”2024May 4, Alex Hern, Dan Milmo, quotingSam Altman, “Danger and opportunity for news industry as AI woos it for vital human-written copy”, inThe Guardian‎[5],→ISSN:Speaking in January, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, appeared dismissive of NYT’s relevance to its products. “Any one particular training source, it doesn’tmove the needlefor us that much,” he said.

Examples:

EN: Buddy, that doesn't even move the needle.
ES: Colega, eso ni siquiera mueve la aguja.
EN: Can we cheaply and quickly move the needle at a school?
ES: Podemos económicamente y rápidamente cambiar el comportamiento en la escuela?
EN: I think you can move the needle here, Tyler.
ES: Creo que la última palabra en todo esto la tienes tú, Tyler.
EN: Like, that artwork isn't gonna move the needle at all.
ES: Como que las ilustraciones no van a mover la aguja en absoluto.
EN: Did the debate move the needle at all?
ES: ¿El debate movió la aguja aunque fuera un poco?
EN: Now Habitat will look good on an application... but does Sacramento really move the needle?
ES: Ahora, Hábitat se verá bien en una solicitud, Pero, ¿Sacramento realmente valdrá la pena?
EN: To tell you the truth, I felt kind of bad taking it, because it wasn't gonna move the needle, but, hey, dog's got to eat, right?
ES: A decir verdad, me sentí mal al aceptarlo. ...porque no sería suficiente pero, vamos, hay que comer, ¿no?
EN: Greg, the Pope himself has begun to move the needle on this.
ES: Greg, el propio Papa ha empezado a cambiar las normas.
EN: The best way to move the needle, when people are talking about the environment, is the bottom line.
ES: La mejor manera de inclinar la balanza... cuando las personas hablan del ambiente... son los resultados.
EN: I mean, I don't even know what he would be doing, but it's got to help move the needle a little bit, right?
ES: Quiero decir, yo ni siquiera sabía lo que él estaba haciendo. pero eso ayudará a pasar el rencor un poco ¿no?
EN: Now, we are so pummeled by stories and visual hyperbole that it's a very different world in trying to move the needle in terms of getting humans to accept your theses.
ES: Hoy estamos tan preocupados por la historia y las hipérboles visuales, que hacen del mundo un lugar muy diferente en términos de lo que mueve la aguja que indica la aceptación de una tesis.
EN: Uh, although, if I, uh, if I did have one note, uh, the beige granny panties didn't exactly move the needle.
ES: Aunque, si tengo... si tengo que aclarar algo... las bragas de abuela beige no es que hayan movido la aguja.
EN: -But if we can move the needle...
ES: - Pero si podemos mover la aguja ...
EN: One free case is not going to move the needle, no matter how worthy it is.
ES: Un caso gratis no hará la diferencia, no importa qué tan valioso sea.
EN: I need to move the needle today.
ES: Tengo que actuar hoy.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).