All 5 Uses of
recoil
in
Middlemarch
- He reflected, with much probability on his side, that Lydgate would by-and-by be caught tripping too, and that his ungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by his professional brethren, would by-and-by recoil on himself.†
Chpt 3 *
- In vain he said to himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation, a chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning; and he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that he should escape dishonor.†
Chpt 7
- That recoil had at last urged him to make preparations for quitting Middlemarch.†
Chpt 7
- She had no sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before.†
Chpt 8
- Some time, perhaps—when he was dying—he would tell her all: in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand in the gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from his touch.†
Chpt 8
Definition:
-
(recoil) to move backward suddenly (sometimes figuratively)especially:
- the backward jerk of a gun or cannon when it is fired
- when a person flinches (suddenly draws back) from someone or something, as with fear, disgust, or pain
- when a person is emotionally repulsed, as by disgust
- when something intended to go in one direction figuratively falls back in the opposite direction; for example, a story told to hurt someone that comes back to hurt the teller