put back the clock

1. see set back, def. 3.

Example Sentences

He said the broadcaster “accepts it cannot put back the clock and wishes to express its genuine remorse for the harm it has caused” Mr. McAlpine.

From New York Times

It was inevitable—one can't put back the clock.

From Project Gutenberg

And many, many times as he sighed upon his uneasy pillow did he wish, as so many have wished before and since, that he could put back the clock.

From Project Gutenberg

“Why, you’ve put back the clock a quarter of a century for me, dear,” he declared.

From Project Gutenberg

But Burke’s piece of magnificent rhetoric effectually turned the nation out of her course, and had her in league with absolutists to put back the clock of European democracy a hundred years or more.

From Project Gutenberg