intransitive. To shrink or flinch for fear; to hesitate (esp. const. infinitive); to refrain.

intransitive. To start aside, so as to elude anything; to swerve, ‘shy’; to flinch, shrink, give way.

intransitive. To start or go aside (so as to avoid some person or thing); to shy; to shrink or steal away; to hang back. Obsolete.

intransitive. To shrink, flinch, take fright.

intransitive. To start aside, so as to elude anything; to flinch, swerve; = blench, v.1 2.

intransitive. To start out of the way, so as to elude anything; = blench, v.1 2, blenk, v. 2. Obsolete. rare.

intransitive. figurative. To shrink from or balk at some action or prospect. Chiefly with from. Obsolete.

To refuse or hesitate to act in the face of anything irksome, grievous, horrible, or distasteful; to recoil mentally or morally.

intransitive. To shrink, start back, give way. archaic. (Later users apparently mix it up with blanch, v.1 6, in sense of ‘turn pale, change colour…

To give way; to sway, totter; figurative to shrink from action. Obsolete.

intransitive. To shrink back or away, cower; occasionally const. infinitive, to hesitate to do something. Obsolete.

intransitive. To give way, draw back, yield ground in a combat; to draw back or turn aside from a course of action, a duty or enterprise. In later…

To start, flinch, or shrink. (Now the principal general sense.) intransitive. figurative. Of the mind, heart, etc.: to shrink at or from some…

? To wince, flinch, shirk (after French bouger).

intransitive. To shrink, draw back, hesitate.

intransitive. To shrink, to flinch; to feel disinclined, etc.

intransitive. To turn aside, blench, flinch, shrink. Obsolete.

With away, up: To shrink from.

intransitive. To recoil or retreat from something with aversion; to shrink from. Obsolete.

To shy (as a horse), to swerve. Also figurative.

intransitive. U.S. To recoil from something. rare.