turn back

Verb

turn back (third-person singular simple present turns back, present participle turning back, simple past and past participle turned back)

1. (intransitive) To reverse direction and retrace one's steps.
   • Realising he had forgotten his briefcase, he turned back and re-entered the office.
   • 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...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...

   Synonyms:

   about turn, about face

2. (transitive) To cause to reverse direction and retrace one's steps.
   • The barrage of machine-gun fire turned back the encroaching soldiers.
   • 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.
   • He stopped drinking for a couple of years, but now he has turned back to his old ways.
   • Once we take this decision, there's no turning back.
4. (transitive) To 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. (transitive) To adjust to a previous setting.
   • In Autumn we normally turn the clocks back one hour.
   • I love that song: turn back to it!
6. (transitive) To fold something back; to fold down.
   • When you make the bed, please always turn the sheet back over the blanket.
7. (obsolete, transitive) To 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