Verb

(shunn)

To avoid, especially persistently.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington

, title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}

To escape (a threatening evil, an unwelcome task etc).

To screen, hide.

To shove, push.

Verb

(en verb)

(ambitransitive) To reject disdainfully; contemn; scorn.

* Shakespeare

to spurn at your most royal image

* Shakespeare

What safe and nicely I might well delay / By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn .

* John Locke

Domestics will pay a more cheerful service when they find themselves not spurned because fortune has laid them at their master's feet.

To reject something by pushing it away with the foot.

* Shakespeare

I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.

To waste; fail to make the most of (an opportunity)

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=September 28 , author=Tom Rostance , title=Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Marouane Chamakh then spurned a great chance to kill the game off when he ran onto Andrey Arshavin's lofted through ball but shanked his shot horribly across the face of goal.}}

(obsolete) To kick or toss up the heels.

* Chaucer

The miller spurned at a stone.

* Gay

The drunken chairman in the kennel spurns .