warn off

present singular third person warns off · participle present warning off · participle past warned off · past warned off

1. To directly or indirectly persuade someone not to take a particular course of action.

   Some women for instance warn you off when they have their period.

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[13]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

   3 more examples

   I soon found I should be knocked entirely to pieces by the graze and jam of the boxes and scrippage, as the tide of carrier-ponies crushed past me, if I did not look sharply out and warn them off with my whip.

   1856, Robert Chambers, chapter 6, in Tracings of Iceland and the Faröe Islands, London & Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, page 47

   The "D.N.B." wrote of one Railway Member that "he made himself personally acquainted with the working of the new systems of railroads, and with more foresight than his neighbours, he welcomed railways on his estate when other landowners were ordering their gamekeepers to warn off the surveyors or to put an end to their operations by force."

   1960 March 29, N. Caplan, “The Railway Member of Parliament”, in Railway Magazine, page 208

   Anyone found participating in, or even attending, flapping races is liable to be warned off.

   2016, Gerald Hammond, The Language of Horse Racing, page 81