turn backverb

• 1

  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 of a great and enervating fear.
• 2

  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.
• 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

  To prevent, or refuse to allow, passage or progress.

  • The soldiers turned back all the refugees at the frontier.
• 5

  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

  To fold something back; to fold down.

  • When you make the bed, please always turn the sheet back over the blanket.
• 7

  obsoleteTo give back; to return.

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