double back

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double back

To return to some thing or place after moving away from it, especially by following the same path taken when leaving. I was walking to my car when I realized I'd forgotten my lunch on the kitchen counter and doubled back to get it.
See also: back, double

double back (on someone or something)

[for a person or animal] to reverse motion, moving toward (rather than away from) someone or something. (Refers primarily to a person or animal that is being pursued by someone or a group.) The deer doubled back on the hunter. The robber doubled back on the police, and they lost track of him. I doubled back on my own trail.
See also: back, double

double back

Reverse one's course, go back the way one has come. For example, The officer lost the suspect, who had doubled back on him. This term, at first put simply as to double, is used largely to describe a way of evading pursuit. [Late 1500s]
See also: back, double

double back

v.
1. To turn around and move back in the opposite direction: Since we got lost, we'll need to double back and start over.
2. To turn sharply or reverse course completely, as of a path: The road doubles back, following the course of the river. The trail up the mountain doubles back on itself several times.
See also: back, double
References in periodicals archive ?
Follow path as it doubles back along the opposite bank of the river towards the village.
Walk of the week; Inside Out
But he notices the child alone in the vehicle and doubles back on himself, appearing to get something out of the driver's cab of his truck.
Chilling moment stranger tries to snatch girl, 8, from car after mother leaves her alone to pop in shop; The man spotted the girl on her own in the vehicle and tried to grab her while he thought no one was around
As they each vie for control, jealousies simmer, tempers flare, and decades-old grudges threaten to tear them apart despite "their talent for pretending everything was fine." The secrets of the past play their part, too, as this multigenerational saga doubles back to Red and Abby's courtship in 1959 and Junior's exodus from Appalachia to Baltimore during the Great Depression.
A Spool of Blue Thread
Camilla will then watch children's riding classes and tour the countryside area while Charles doubles back to the sheep section and visits the food hall.
Royal couple's 3.5-hour tour
PS3.50 @Tesco Twist the ponytail around until it doubles back on itself.
celebrity cuts; CARMEN ELECTRA
of Colorado-Boulder) examines a number of novels that share a peculiar inward turning of the narrative, a gaze into the cosmos, he calls it, that doubles back to produce an image of the gazing self.
The mind of the novel; reflexive fiction and the ineffable. (reprint, 1982)
Writing of his own dolls, Bellmer averred: "The anagram is the key to all my work." It followed that "the body is like a sentence that invites us to rearrange it." In Compulsive Beauty, Hal Foster suggests that Bellmer's shifting of desire thus "doubles back, turns in, as if to capture the object, to make, unmake, and remake its image again and again." At the risk of adding yet another source to Tyson's ever-spiraling constellation, this sure seems apt.
Nicola Tyson: Friedrich Petzel Gallery
There are plenty of weapons at hand to keep you in the lead, including homing missiles and a brilliant rocket which speeds past the car in the lead and then doubles back and blows it away.
Computer game review: ROLLCAGE (pounds 39.99 PlayStation) - DRIVE THE ACE RACE
Finding no exit, the gas stream splits in two and doubles back, creating two counter-rotating vortices.
Oscillating eddies help meter gas
12.03 pm: The group reaches the war memorial in the town centre and then doubles back to walk towards the Ross Peers sports centre.
THE SOHAM MURDER TRIAL: Group traces girls' `last steps' TIMETABLE
First, Lawler's work doubles back on itself, delivering the same information twice.
LOUISE LAWLER
"We've taken the men's doubles back to three sets up to the quarter-finals and that will be an option for the singles if this keeps up.
It's three and out for first time
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