Library / English Dictionary

SHUN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: shunned    , shunning   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Avoid and stay away from deliberately; stay clear of

Synonyms:

eschew; shun

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "shun" is one way to...):

avoid (stay clear from; keep away from; keep out of the way of someone or something)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

shunning (deliberately avoiding; keeping away from or preventing from happening)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Expel from a community or group

Synonyms:

ban; banish; blackball; cast out; ostracise; ostracize; shun

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "shun" is one way to...):

expel; kick out; throw out (force to leave or move out)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Credits

 Context examples: 

I didn't mean to, but you looked so funny I really couldn't help it, replied Meg, passing over the first part of his reproach, for it was quite true that she had shunned him, remembering the Moffat party and the talk after it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I looked up at him: he shunned my eye.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Ill armed and half starved, they were still desperate men, to whom danger had lost all fears: for what was death that they should shun it to cling to such a life as theirs?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Pulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out:—"Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgment Day."

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I felt veneration for St. John—veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You have as good as said that I am a married man—as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have refused to kiss me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)