Unless you’re eating a family-style meal with a lazy Susan in the middle, you’ll find that most tables aren’t designed to turn. This begs the question: How did “how the tables have turned” (or, if you’re a fan of The Office, “how the turn tables”) become a common expression? According to Merriam-Webster, “how the tables have turned” means “to bring about a reversal of the relative conditions or fortunes of two contending parties.” While this explanation might make sense to those who have used the turn of phrase, it doesn’t explain the history of the metaphor, or that it originated in the world of board games.
The saying comes from a specific type of game known as a “table game.” One of the earliest known examples is an ancient Roman game called tabula, derived from the Latin word for “board” or “plank.” Later, medieval people played a popular game called “tables” that acquired a new name in the mid-1600s: backgammon. It remains a popular table game today; in a nod to the legacy of its early years, the playing board is called a table.
So, whether you say “how the tables have turned,” “turn the tables,” or follow Michael Scott’s lead, they all come from the idea of playing table games. According to the blog Phrase Finder, the saying refers to the literal act of reversing the board so that players are forced to play from an opponent’s position. Some games have it built into the rules, but it might also be a superstition for a losing player to turn the board to change up their luck and play from the winning side, whether there’s a real advantage to doing so or not.
We know table games existed long before this, but the phrase appeared in print in 1634 in a work by Robert Sanderson titled XII sermons. It read, “Whosoever thou art that dost another wrong, do but turn the tables: imagine thy neighbor were now playing thy game, and thou his.” The metaphor became common by the 1800s, and then use dramatically increased after the 1950s, possibly as it made the leap from gaming usage to widespread metaphorical usage.
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