0 the time at which a change or an effect cannot be stopped:
1 a time during an activity or process when an important decision has to be made or when a situation changes completely:
a tipping point in sth Many developed countries are getting close to a tipping point in their attitude to the environment.
be at a tipping point Employers could find themselves at a tipping point, where so few employees participate in their health-care plans it threatens their ability to obtain group coverage.
reach/approach/near a tipping point Employee anger over pay violations in the restaurant industry may have reached a tipping point.
After the tipping point has been reached, even those opposed to the technology can no longer avoid it.
Within this model, adolescence is described as a period of intense change that serves as the tipping point for the onset of borderline personality disorder.
He had reached that tipping point in the long struggle of the chemically dependent where he star ted to move away from the street.
The long-assumed tipping point of indigenous agro-pastoralism in the calamitous 1890s (rinderpest, rebellion and retaliatory land seizures) is shown to have had a class and gender dimension.
Failure to act now means humankind will hurtle towards a tipping point from which there is no return.
We will reach the tipping point in this country by focusing and spending the money on the young and subjecting them to intensive, residential rehabilitation.
We are reaching a tipping point at which damage is irreversible and, even worse, accelerating.
If that had been the tipping point for the panel, there could he concern about whether the panel had checked whether the procedure had taken place.
