put the screws on/to (someone or something)

idiom

informal

: to use force or the threat of force to make (someone or something) do what one wants

The government is finally putting the screws to an industry that's been evading environmental laws for years.

Examples of put the screws on/to (someone or something) in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

That means that Beijing can put the screws on France without hurting its economy too much. —Lionel Lim, Fortune Asia, 12 Jan. 2024

And the second one is that the U.S. holds tremendous structural economic power in the international system and can really put the screws to China. —Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Foreign Affairs, 17 Nov. 2022

And President Xi Jinping has put the screws to tech firms in the past. —Will Oremus, Washington Post, 17 Apr. 2023

The Argentine lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo, who has put the screws to genocidal strongmen and placed dictators behind bars, isn’t sure whether Donald Trump should be tried for the Jan. 6 riot. —Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 1 Mar. 2023

And while America is embracing the Saint Peter’s story — who wouldn’t love a 2,200-student commuter school on a busy street in Jersey City trying to put the screws to Tobacco Road? — the Peacocks themselves are soaking it in without taking that seeding so seriously. —Tim Bielik, cleveland, 27 Mar. 2022

But Jrue Holiday and the Greek Freak put the screws on Phoenix, which was not exactly a shock. —Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 3 Aug. 2021