about-turn
/əˈbaʊt tɚn/
about-turn noun: a turn of 180 degrees, typically in a military formation .
Noun
about-turn (plural about-turns)
- A turn of 180 degrees, typically in a military formation .
- Total reversal of opinion or attitude .
- A sell-out crowd of 10,000 then observed perfectly a period of silence before the team revealed their black armbands, complete with stitched-in poppies, for the match. After Fifa’s about-turn, it must have been a frantic few days for the England kit manufacturer. The on-field challenge was...2011 November 10, Jeremy Wilson, “England Under 21 5 Iceland Under 21 0: match report”, in Telegraph
- When Francis visited Chile in 2018, he dismissed the protesters and accused them of “calumny” in the full gaze of the world’s press. It caused the head of the Vatican’s own sex abuse commission to rebuke his boss publicly. Back in Rome, Francis responded by dispatching an envoy to look into the...2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian
Verb
about-turn (third-person singular simple present about-turns, present participle about-turning, simple past and past participle about-turned)
- To turn 180 degrees, typically in a military formation.
- Synonyms:
- about-face
about-turn meaning in Hindi, Malayalam, Indonesian and Vietnamese
about-turn in Hindi
- किसी विचार, योजना, पीछे मुड़, पीछे मुड़ना, पूर्ण परिवर्तन
about-turn in Malayalam
- എതിർദിശയിലേയ്ക്ക് തിരിയൽ, പുറംതിരിയൽ
about-turn in Indonesian
- turn of 180 degrees
- balik kanan
- to turn 180 degrees
- balik kanan
about-turn in Vietnamese
- turn of 180 degrees
- đằng sau quay
Examples of about-turn in a sentence
- After Fifa’s about-turn, it must have been a frantic few days for the England kit manufacturer.2011 November 10, Jeremy Wilson, “England Under 21 5 Iceland Under 21 0: match report”, in Telegraph:
- When his report came back siding with the protesters, Francis did a swift about-turn and described what he said on his visit to Chile as “the lowest moment” of his papacy.2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian:
Synonyms of about-turn
Forms of about-turn
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | about-turns |
| alternative form | about turn |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | about-turns |
| present participle | about-turning |
| past participle | about-turned |
| past | about-turned |
Origin of about-turn
From the imperative phrase used in the military.
Questions about about-turn
- What does about-turn mean?
- About-turn means a turn of 180 degrees, typically in a military formation .
- What is about-turn in Hindi?
- About-turn in Hindi is किसी विचार, योजना, पीछे मुड़. See About-turn meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use about-turn in a sentence?
- After Fifa’s about-turn, it must have been a frantic few days for the England kit manufacturer.
- What part of speech is about-turn?
- About-turn can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce about-turn?
- About-turn is pronounced /əˈbaʊt tɚn/ (US).
- What is the plural of about-turn?
- The plural of about-turn is about-turns.
Words near about-turn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: about-turn (page history and authors); about-turn (Hindi Wiktionary) (page history and authors); about-turn (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-about turn.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-about-turn.wav.
Cite this entry: “about-turn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/about-turn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.