Tighten the reins

The police needs to tighten the reins of those who damage public property in the name of protests

Better English speaking skills come easy to those who are regular in upgrading their knowledge, adding more to it and practicing what they know.

The target phrase for this post is – tighten the reins. Let’s take a look at some usage examples:

1. The PM has tightened the reins of his ministers after a series of controversies originating from weird statements given by them.
2. The new chief minister has tightened the reins of his officers and given strict instructions to them to listen to people’s problems and solve them promptly.

As you might have guessed – tightening the reins means exerting more control. It’s the horse analogy – when you tighten the reins, the horse is less free to move and is more under your control. It is used to describe a situation where a person in authority decides to apply greater control to those under him.

A close relative of this phrase is to rein in.

Example usage for that would be:

The captain has to rein in his team mates who are making one irresponsible statement after the other.

Let’s take a few more examples of both the forms:

1. Pakistan needs to tighten the reins of its militant machinery. Proclaiming peaceful intentions and sending terrorists cannot go on forever.
2. Your party needs to rein in its supporters who are going on rampage every other day. The bad publicity it would egenrate would be enough to lose the election for you.
3. If you have won the election on the support and muscle power of criminals, it becomes extremely hard to rein them in and later, law and order situation becomes a major headache.
4. The Autralian captain needs to tighten the reins on his boys. Their behavior on the pitch does not befit the glorious game of cricket and if the opposition team decides to pay back in the same coin, it would only deteriorate the atmosphere further.