recoil

Speech parts

1. recoil - Noun

2. recoil - Verb

Meaning

To start, roll, bound, spring, or fall back; to take a reverse motion; to be driven or forced backward; to return.

To draw back, as from anything repugnant, distressing, alarming, or the like; to shrink.

To turn or go back; to withdraw one's self; to retire.

To draw or go back.

A starting or falling back; a rebound; a shrinking; as, the recoil of nature, or of the blood.

Specifically, the reaction or rebounding of a firearm when discharged.

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Examples

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. Arthur Conan Doyle

One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself. Jack London

Already an old man, he [Samuel Johnson] ventured on his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea. Robert Louis Stevenson

I'd be glad of a retaliation that wouldn't recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies. Emily Brontë

We don't harm the gods when we mingle their names with our curses and obscenities. We harm ourselves. I said that I didn't regard most gods as holy, but they don't have to be for our malice and mockery to recoil upon ourselves. Gene Wolfe

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will. Edith Wharton

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