turn the corner

To begin to find success or improvement after a particularly difficult or troubling period. I know that rehab has been hard on you, but I feel like you've been really turning the corner lately. Their new startup took a couple of years to get going, but they turned the corner when their product was featured in a high-profile tech magazine.

Fig. to pass a critical point in a process. The patient turned the corner last night. She should begin to show improvement now. The project has turned the corner. The rest should be easy.

Pass a milestone or critical point, begin to recover. For example, Experts say the economy has turned the corner and is in the midst of an upturn, or The doctor believes he's turned the corner and is on the mend. This expression alludes to passing around the corner in a race, particularly the last corner. [First half of 1800s]

If someone or something turns the corner, they begin to recover from a serious illness or a difficult situation. It's been a nasty, long illness but I think he's finally turned the corner. Has California's economy finally turned the corner? In April the official figure for the state's unemployment rate dropped for the second month running.

To begin to recover. Corner here refers to a street corner, and turning it betokens going in a new and presumably better direction. However, this expression was used in several different senses in the past. “That expression . . . He has turn’d the corner, i.e., gone away so as no more to be seen,” wrote Samuel Pegge (Anonymiana, 1796), defining the term to be synonymous with dying. Both Dickens and Trollope used it in the sense of financial recovery. “Now he had turned the corner, he could afford [it],” wrote Trollope in Orley Farm (1862).