turn back

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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.

   Synonyms: about turn, about face

   Realising he had forgotten his briefcase, he turned back and re-entered the office.

   • 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 (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:

     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 of a great and enervating fear.

2. (transitive) To cause to reverse direction and retrace one's steps.

   The barrage of machine-gun fire turned back the encroaching soldiers.

   • 1951 February, “Notes and News: Lynton & Barnstaple Remains”, in Railway Magazine, page 136:

     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.

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.

   Synonyms: drive away, repel, turn away, stop

   Coordinate term: kick out

   The soldiers turned back all the refugees at the frontier.

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.

   Coordinate term: turn down

   When you make the bed, please always turn the sheet back over the blanket.

7. (obsolete, transitive) To give back; to return.
   • 1602, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida‎^[1], act II, scene II:

     We turn not back the silks upon the merchants,
     When we have soiled them; nor the remainder viands.

• In sense 3 the object is normally a person, or group of people, or means of transport. It may appear before or after the particle. If the object is a pronoun, then it must be before the particle.
• In senses 4 and 5 the object is normally a thing. It may appear before or after the particle. If the object is a pronoun, then it must be before the particle.