pulling away

verb

present participle of pull away
as in detaching

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Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for pulling away
  1. detaching
  2. disengaging
  3. flying
  4. disentangling
  5. fleeing
  6. backing down
  7. shrinking
  8. flinching
Verb
  • To begin the overhaul, Weigand disassembled the clock on site, carefully detaching the heavy weights and unhooking the pendulum.
    — La'Tasha Givens, CBS News, 20 Oct. 2026
  • Woltanski suggests detaching the voucher from the state funding formula entirely.
    — Austin Horn, Miami Herald, 9 Oct. 2026
Definition of detaching
Verb
  • Nothing about that reaches the employee who is steadily gaining weight, quietly disengaging from exercise or managing chronic stress without any support.
    — Neepa Patel, Forbes.com, 24 Sep. 2026
  • Vicki disengaging is par for the course at this point — and speaking of par, the women arrive at the country club to practice their golf swings and deliver enough material to fill an episode.
    — Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 11 Sep. 2026
Definition of disengaging
Verb
  • Reporting from Tel Aviv Shlomit Ofir is one of the many Israelis flying in from abroad to cast their votes in today’s election.
    — Yarden Segev, NBC news, 27 Oct. 2026
  • The Air Force puts the missile’s range at approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), allowing aircraft to launch it from a considerable distance rather than flying directly over hostile territory.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 27 Oct. 2026
Definition of flying
Verb
  • Cutting Iran off completely from the UAE could deal a serious blow to the Islamic Republic’s economy — but experts say disentangling the pair’s commercial ties could prove difficult.
    — semafor.com, semafor.com, 20 Aug. 2026
  • New characters and backstory details are dropped in before existing loose ends are tied up, resulting in unclear motivations and convoluted layers of subplot that, ultimately, do not prove relevant enough to have been worth disentangling.
    — Jared Kaufman, Twin Cities, 9 Aug. 2026
Definition of disentangling
Verb
  • Instead of stopping to help Batani-Khalfani, police alleged that Cardenas continued driving, fleeing the scene of the hit-and-run crash.
    — Dean Fioresi, CBS News, 21 Oct. 2026
  • Hollywood jobs have been fleeing for years for cheaper filming locales, and the restaurant industry has been shaken by mounting closures.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 21 Oct. 2026
Definition of fleeing
Verb
  • Walzer responded thoughtfully to each of the critiques, but without backing down.
    — Jordi Graupera, New Yorker, 22 Oct. 2026
  • Former president Jair Bolsonaro — Flávio Bolsonaro’s father — signed a 2020 decree that opened a path toward privatizing parts of it before immediately backing down amid a wave of criticism.
    — Terrence McCoy, Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2026
Definition of backing down
Verb
  • Neither candidate reached the majority needed to win outright, forcing both campaigns to compete for a shrinking pool of undecided voters while trying to mobilize their supporters in a country deeply divided over its political future.
    — Alessandra Freitas, CNN Money, 25 Oct. 2026
  • Demographic data expose disparities that raw numbers can obscure and show whether those gaps are growing or shrinking.
    — Julie Morita, Time, 25 Oct. 2026
Definition of shrinking
Verb
  • In my experience, automation becomes commercially viable not when failures disappear, but when the system is built to handle them without flinching.
    — Shivansh Inamdar, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2026
  • Amy Adams’ Anna Bowden — who has a complicated history with Max as his former lawyer — peeks through the curtain to spy on him, flinching as Max insists on snapping his own broken finger into place.
    — Benjamin VanHoose, PEOPLE, 6 July 2026
Definition of flinching
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

pulling a face
pulling away
pulling down
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Cite this Entry

“Pulling away.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pulling%20away. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.

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