All 5 Uses of
recoil
in
The Mill on the Floss
- Her mind glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she recoiled from the remembrance of it.†
Chpt 6.3
- That dreamy gliding in the boat which had lasted for four hours, and had brought some weariness and exhaustion; the recoil of her fatigued sensations from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat at this unknown distance from home, and walking for long miles,—all helped to bring her into more complete subjection to that strong, mysterious charm which made a last parting from Stephen seem the death of all joy, and made the thought of wounding him like the first touch of…†
Chpt 6.13
- The feeling of a few short weeks had hurried her into the sins her nature had most recoiled from,—breach of faith and cruel selfishness; she had rent the ties that had given meaning to duty, and had made herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her own passion.†
Chpt 6.14
- He had the uneasy consciousness that he had robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native honor in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach him.†
Chpt 6.14
- But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious degradation.†
Chpt 7.5 *
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