never to return

idiom

used to say that someone never went back to a place
She left home never to return.

Examples of never to return in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Within four months, Matt’s bipolar cycling had resolved, never to return. David Baszucki, Baltimore Sun, 9 July 2024 Sometimes students would leave at the end of the day, never to return. Joanna Slater, Washington Post, 23 June 2024 For reasons revealed late in the novel, her home life deteriorated significantly in her teens, leading her to pick a distant college, never to return. Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor, 18 June 2024 With the exception of local colleges that draw students from across the area, the city’s Arab population — a prewar majority — has mostly fled, or been expelled since 1948, never to return, as part of what Palestinians call the Nakba. Damien Cave Amit Elkayam, New York Times, 23 May 2024 The three women hide out in the small Spanish town that Gala’s mother fled 50 years ago, vowing never to return. Los Angeles Times, 16 May 2024 Sheldon doesn't look up from his book as his father walks out the kitchen door into the (heavenly bright) sunlight, never to return. Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY, 10 May 2024 This legal framework fell apart in the 1910s, never to return, after a wave of prohibitory laws swept the nation and courts embraced a broader view of the government’s regulatory powers. David Pozen, TIME, 25 Apr. 2024 In the end, de Hales agreed to abjure the realm, which meant walking, barefoot, to the port of Chester, a hundred and thirty miles away, holding a wooden cross and wearing sackcloth, and taking a ship across the Irish Sea, never to return. Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'never to return.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Dictionary Entries Near never to return

Cite this Entry

“Never to return.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/never%20to%20return. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!