TURNING AWAY

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deliberately avoiding; keeping away from or preventing from happening

Synonyms:

avoidance; dodging; shunning; turning away

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("turning away" is a kind of...):

rejection (the act of rejecting something)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "turning away"):

aversion; averting (the act of turning yourself (or your gaze) away)

escape (an avoidance of danger or difficulty)

near thing (something that barely avoids failure or disaster)

Credits

Context examples:

As they approached Barton, indeed, and entered on scenes of which every field and every tree brought some peculiar, some painful recollection, she grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice, sat earnestly gazing through the window.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

To Milsom Street she was directed, and having made herself perfect in the number, hastened away with eager steps and a beating heart to pay her visit, explain her conduct, and be forgiven; tripping lightly through the church-yard, and resolutely turning away her eyes, that she might not be obliged to see her beloved Isabella and her dear family, who, she had reason to believe, were in a shop hard by.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Then turning away towards any or all of the rest, he tranquilly said, “Mr. and Miss Crawford were mentioned in my last letters from Mansfield. Do you find them agreeable acquaintance?”

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He drew a sovereign from his pocket and threw it down upon the slab, turning away with the air of a man whose disgust is too deep for words.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He is turning away.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Lydia gaped as he opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him with: Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Phillips talks of turning away Richard; and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I should not have thought it the sort of play to be so easily filled up, with us, replied Edmund, turning away to the fire, where sat his mother, aunt, and Fanny, and seating himself with a look of great vexation.