ABACK • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Aback

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/əbˈæk/ Listen

adverb

Aback adv.

Toward the back or rear; backward. "Therewith aback she started."

Behind; in the rear.

(Naut.) Backward against the mast; said of the sails when pressed by the wind.

To be taken aback.

(a)

To be driven backward against the mast; said of the sails, also of the ship when the sails are thus driven.

(b)

To be suddenly checked, baffled, or discomfited.

noun

Aback n. An abacus. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Aback'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Aback" Quotes from Famous Books

... look for it—and about that dream of mine, did I tell you? I dreamt the comet came into our drawing-room, and the leg of a Chinese table turned into a snake and snorted at it, and the comet looked so taken aback that I woke myself with a shout of laughter. And then we talked of popular superstitions about comets, and dreams, and ghosts— particularly ghosts, and I told a number of creepy stories, and one old gentleman ...

— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... ever did see. I could have walked under them if they'd have let me. But they were very proud and haughty dogs, and looked only once at me, and then sniffed in the air. The little lady's own dog was an old gentleman bull-dog. He'd come along with us, and when he notices how taken aback I was with all I see, 'e turned quite kind and affable and ...

— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... aback by this speech, but was wonderfully firm. She passed her white, jewelled hand over her eyes, seemed calculating, and then whispered, with a confiding look of innocent helplessness, admirably assumed, "About as many as amount to twelve ...

— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... quite taken aback with the reply, given with no visible emotion. "Why should I not tell you? How will it hurt me that you should know? My husband was convicted ...

— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... taken aback by the unexpectedness of the question. He had come to regard Jessup and himself so completely at one in their desire to penetrate the mystery of Lynch's shady doings that it had never occurred to him that his intense absorption in the situation might strike Bud as peculiar. It ...

— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

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