What does "walk a turn" in the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption" mean?
I found this phrase in the movie, but didn't find the meaning in the dictionary, it comes from the following sentence:
And that's how it came to pass, that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of '49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning, drinking icy cold, Bohemian style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.

Could you please tell me what it means? Thanks a lot!

Thank all of you! But I have another question, I'd like to know if native speakers use this phrase"walk a turn", or you never use it, it's only used in this movie. Is it that the character deliberately change the phrase to be funny or that the director want to express that the speaker "Red" is uneducted by letting him make mistakes.

Question

What does "walk a turn" in the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption" mean?
I found this phrase in the movie, but didn't find the meaning in the dictionary, it comes from the following sentence:
And that's how it came to pass, that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of '49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning, drinking icy cold, Bohemian style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.

Could you please tell me what it means? Thanks a lot!

Thank all of you! But I have another question, I'd like to know if native speakers use this phrase"walk a turn", or you never use it, it's only used in this movie. Is it that the character deliberately change the phrase to be funny or that the director want to express that the speaker "Red" is uneducted by letting him make mistakes.

Answer

Thank all of you! But I have another question, I'd like to know if native speakers use this phrase"walk a turn", or you never use it, it's only used in this movie. Is it that the character deliberately change the phrase to be funny or that the director want to express that the speaker "Red" is uneducted by letting him make mistakes.

Answer

I agree with Michael's comments. Also, "walk a turn" could be understood as slang for "work a shift".

Answer

Your question should be:  Could you please tell me what it mean(s)?

Answer

Thank you very much, Michael, it helps a lot.

Answer

Here "screw" means a prison guard. "Walked a turn" seems to me to mean something like "worked at", though more literally "made a patrol on foot"  ("walked") "around parts of the prison"  ("a turn"; in older English, people would "take a turn around the garden", meaning take a walk around the garden.)

Answers · 5

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