make/put a dent

idiom

: to decrease something slightly or to make something somewhat weaker

We tried our best to fix the problem, but nothing we did seems to have made a dent.

—often + in

It's going to take more than a new law to make a dent in the city's drug crime.

a vacation that won't put too big a dent in your wallet

Examples of make/put a dent in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Would a $3,500 U.S.-made iPhone make a dent in sales? —Dev Patnaik, Forbes.com, 22 Apr. 2025

Ryan Johnson, interim chief executive of the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, is tasked with spending those dollars to finally make a dent in the region’s unrelenting homelessness crisis. —Liam Dillon, Los Angeles Times, 16 Apr. 2025

Eliminating it isn’t going to make a dent in America’s $2 trillion deficit. —The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 13 Apr. 2025

With big gains in benchmarks and vibes, this might be the first Google model that can make a dent in ChatGPT's dominance. —ArsTechnica, 4 Apr. 2025