tight ship

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

tight ship (plural tight ships)

1. (idiomatic) A well-organized and highly disciplined organization.

   to run a tight ship

   • 1999, Strangers with Candy (television production), spoken by Chuck Noblet (Stephen Colbert):

     You're new here, so let me lay it down for you. I run a pretty tight ship around here. That's why the students call me "the hammer".

   • 2015 February 23, “Oscars 2015: 10 things we learned”, in The Guardian (London)‎^[1]:

     I know your agent’s third cousin really wanted to hear their name, but the Oscar show producers run a tight ship, yes-sir-Bob.

Translations

highly disciplined organization

• Finnish: tiukka kuri (literally “strict discipline”) (in expressions)
• German: strenges Regiment n
• Italian: pieno regime
• Polish: żelazna ręka f
• Swedish: strikt regemente n

See also

• right the ship
• iron fist

Further reading

• “run a tight ship”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.