blench

verb

1. (intransitive)To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.

   “Blench not at thy chosen lot.”

   “This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfilment.”

   “Suddenly the great beast beat its hideous wings. […] Again it leaped into the air, and then swiftly fell down upon Éowyn, shrieking, striking with beak and claw. Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings […]”

   “Even a case-hardened monorailist must blench at the thought of the storm such a proposition would create.”

   “"This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."”

2. (intransitive)To quail.
3. (transitive)To deceive; cheat.
4. (transitive)To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.

   “Yesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench.”

5. (transitive)To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
6. (intransitive)To fly off; to turn aside.

   “Though sometimes you do blench from this to that.”

7. (obsolete)To blanch.

   “The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.”

noun

1. A deceit; a trick.
2. A sidelong glance.

   “These blenches gave my heart another youth.”