Use back-off in a sentence

The women wear all their hair, which they comb entirely back off their forehead, and fasten it in most artistic plaits to the head; they spend a great deal of time in the process, but when their hair is once dressed, it does not require to be touched for a whole week.

The boat approaches the fish bow foremost, but is made sharp at both ends that it may "back off," if necessary; the whale being often dangerous to approach, and ordinarily starting, when struck, in a way to render his immediate neighborhood somewhat ticklish.

Then he entered the huge white marble palace of his jeweler, left his watch to be regulated, caught a glimpse of a girl whose hair and neck resembled the hair and neck of his ideal, sidled around until he discovered that she was chewing gum, and backed off, with a bitter smile, into the avenue once more.

Silently and intent upon his duty he walked straight to the Suckling in her log crib, bent over her, crooned to her reassuringly a second, lifted her in his white arms and backed off behind a tall laurel bush with her nodding in delight over his shoulder.

In a week they were back off the rock, and after communications, sailed on for Saint Jacques; the French frigate, in spite of being minus one mast, making fair way under the jury spar set up, and, thanks to the vigorous efforts made in the way of repairs, in excellent fighting trim, and with her crew eager to make up in the end for the loss of their own ship.

The captain was the first to strike his harpoon into the whale, following the weapon with a couple of lances; he was fast, but he quickly backed off from the monster, which, leaping half out of the water, and turning partly round made a dash with open mouth at another boat coming up, and in an instant crushed it into fragments as if it had been built of paper.

Sick at heart I pressed forward once more, going at a steady wolf-trot; and so silently, so noiselessly, that twice I routed deer from their hemlock beds, and once came plump on a tree-cat that puffed up into fury and backed off spitting and growling, eyes like green flames, and every hair on end.

One minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's throats more savagely than ever.

It was in the early evening when she arrived, riding on the front seat of the wagon that brought her trunk; and, when she was ushered in by Julia Cloud, with Leslie in the offing to see what the newcomer would say to it, the girl stepped in, gave a wild glance around, then backed off, and rolled her eyes at her new mistress.

Undaunted by this mishap the steer backed off, lifting his head high, shaking it and bellowing; then suddenly he lowered it, grinding head and horns into the ground, with the evident intention of pulverizing the strange contrivance rattling about his forehead.

Slacking out, therefore, a considerable quantity of the line, he caused the boat to be backed off to a little distance, and, whilst it was kept off as much as possible by the oars of several boats attached, the line was hauled in, till, becoming nearly horizontal by tension, its direction beneath the ice could be clearly determined.

The boy was off the donkey's back and the driver was off mine at apparently one and the same moment, and the car was somehow backed off the pillar; as we scraped through the boy said something to the driver in a brogue that was a shade more sophisticated than the peasant tune.

And all I ever got out of all his analyses was a distinct feeling that something was wrong with every gadget we made, that our markets were saturated, that our competitors had us backed off the map, and that our salesmen were a bunch of ribbon clerks.

Peters to clamber on board at the expense of a thorough wetting, and while the keeper and Sidney waited in the dory, after she had been backed off at a safe distance, the lad said with more of decision in his tones than he ordinarily used when speaking to the old sailor: "I was thinking while you were ashore this forenoon, sir, that if I am to stay at the light until father gets back, it's time I made a change of sleeping quarters."

The delaying action of the lathe-rest necessary to coincide with the spiral gash is imparted by means of a slide set diagonally to the requisite angle of the spiral; as this was a series of rings and not a screw thread, it was necessary, when cutting the teeth, to disengage the leading screw from the backing-off gear to enable the teeth to be cut while the saddle of the lathe was in a stationary position.

Noticing the backing-off lathe above referred to, and being in urgent need of a supply of spiral hob cutters, he expressed his intention of commandeering the lathe for the exclusive manufacture of these particular hobs for Government purposes, heedless of the fact that the lathe was and had been continuously employed for locomotive purposes.

The other day he went into his cage, took the furthest corner of the paper in his bill, backed out bringing the paper over his head until it was all on the floor, then went over to the opposite corner, took that in his bill, backed off the paper until he came to the end, then went around in a circle like the wind, for perhaps a dozen times, with the paper perfectly straight out just like a sail.

One day he went into his cage, took the farthest corner of the paper in his bill, backed out, bringing the paper over his head until it was all on the floor, then went over to the opposite corner, took that in his bill, backed off the paper until he came to the end, then went around in a circle like the wind for perhaps a dozen times, with the paper perfectly straight out just like a sail.

For one single instant the enormous animal remained motionless, while the boat backed off from his flukes; then I saw his mighty, flexible tail, with its million stripes of freckled gray, heave up until his whole back was plainly to be seen to the dorsal fin, when down it came like a dark mass of iron, driving a cloud of spray in the air, and off he headed to sea, the water being too shallow for him to sound.

I knocked at the door, then I backed off the step, when it opened, thinking there must be a mistake about the date, and maybe inscriptions on gravestones was exaggerated; there was a girl in the doorway that looked and acted like Madge Pemberton complete.