Word.ws English Dictionary

shy away from

shy away from verb: to avoid out of fear or caution.

Verb

shy away from (third-person singular simple present shies away from, present participle shying away from, simple past and past participle shied away from)

  1. To avoid out of fear or caution.
    • The Conan O’Brien-penned half-hour has the capacity to rip our collective hearts out the way the cute, funny bad girl next door does to Bart when she reveals that her new boyfriend is Jimbo Jones, but the show keeps shying away from genuine emotion in favor of jokes that, while overwhelmingly...2012 May 27, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “New Kid On The Block” (season 4, episode 8; originally aired 11/12/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club

Forms of shy away from

third-person singular presentshies away from
present participleshying away from
past participleshied away from
pastshied away from

Questions about shy away from

What does shy away from mean?
Shy away from means to avoid out of fear or caution.
What part of speech is shy away from?
Shy away from is a verb.
What is the past tense of shy away from?
The past tense of shy away from is shied away from.

Words near shy away from in the dictionary

  1. shwr.
  2. shwrs.
  3. shxt
  4. shy
  5. shy away
  6. shy away from
  7. shy bairns get noot
  8. shy bairns get nowt
  9. shy bladder
  10. shy bladders
  11. shy greenhood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shy away from (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.

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