0 past simple and past participle of recoil
1 to move back because of fear or disgust (= dislike or disapproval):
When the courts' behaviours are placed and understood in this context, it is very hard to say whether the judicial power has recoiled or expanded.
Numerous pilgrims turned to saints for help because they recoiled from the pain of surgery.
It seems possible that she recoiled from "blustering 'muscularity' " also because it caricatured her own capacity for belligerence and dogmatism.
A freeze-fracture replica of the same sample revealed lesions where the outer membrane had broken and recoiled.
But he quickly recoiled from the urban scene.
The claimants were amenable to this objective but recoiled at the price at which it was to be achieved: the renunciation of their sovereignty rights.
Tocqueville began in hope, then recoiled in anxiety after 1848, and only toward the end of his life retreated into nostalgia.
Taylor says that she understood it, and recoiled from it.
