turn back

present singular third person turns back · participle present turning back · participle past turned back · past turned back

1. intransitiveTo reverse direction and retrace one's steps.

   Realising he had forgotten his briefcase, he turned back and re-entered the office.

   1 more example

   Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.

   1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1

   Synonyms: about turn, about face

2. transitiveTo cause to reverse direction and retrace one's steps.

   The barrage of machine-gun fire turned back the encroaching soldiers.

   1 more example

   Pilton Yard, the Lynton & Barnstaple headquarters, has been taken over by a fur trading firm, and would-be trespassers to the old engine-shed are turned back by the pungent odour of heaps of carcases.

   1951 February, “Notes and News: Lynton & Barnstaple Remains”, in Railway Magazine, page 136

3. To return to a previous state of being.

   Once we take this decision, there's no turning back.

   2 more examples

   He stopped drinking for a couple of years, but now he has turned back to his old ways.

   Welcome to your life There's no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you

   1985, Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley, Chris Hughes, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, in Songs from the Big Chair, performed by Tears for Fears

4. transitiveTo prevent, or refuse to allow, passage or progress.

   The soldiers turned back all the refugees at the frontier.

   Synonyms: drive away, repel, turn away, stop

5. transitiveTo adjust to a previous setting.

   I love that song: turn back to it!

   1 more example

   In Autumn we normally turn the clocks back one hour.

6. transitiveTo fold something back; to fold down.

   When you make the bed, please always turn the sheet back over the blanket.

7. obsoletetransitiveTo give back; to return.

   We turn not back the silks upon the merchants, When we have soiled them; nor the remainder viands.

   1602, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act II, scene II