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View synonyms for bow out

bow out

/ baʊ /

verb

  1. adverb; usually troften foll byof to retire or withdraw gracefully
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Idioms and Phrases

Depart, withdraw, resign, as in After five years as chairman, I felt it was time I bowed out , or We'll have to beat them; they'll never bow out . [First half of 1900s]
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Example Sentences

True, she was only a second-string nominee, after Tom Daschle had to bow out because of those tax problems.

And it seems unlikely that Berlusconi is ready to bow out, especially after such a miraculous comeback.

Her close friend, Magdalena Rodriguez, was to have accompanied her on the trip but was forced to bow out for financial reasons.

Given her advanced age and storied career, wouldn't the aftermath of the surgery have been a good time to gracefully bow out?

The federal courts should just bow out, they say, of deciding things like gay marriage (and abortion rights).

He used to shoot arrows with a bow out of the door of the house and hit a mark on a tree that was opposite him.

Edith leaned over the terrace wall, and took the double-bass bow out of the tall clump of sweet peas.

I took a bow out of a man's hand, and then an arrow, and fitted it to the string; he made signs that he shot birds with it.

And all this Inter-Solar man would do now was to bow out and try poaching elsewhere.

He pulled the violin and bow out of the old baize bag and fiddled as we walked.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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