Definition of "about-turn" []

• A turn of 180 degrees, typically in a military formation. (noun)
• To turn 180 degrees, typically in a military formation. (verb)
• Total reversal of opinion or attitude. (verb)

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• "Mr. Singh's government first was forced into an about-turn on a decision it took last month to allow foreign supermarkets to set up shop in India."
• "Regarding the execrable pact between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, which shocked many former communist sympathizers into lives of anticommunism, Mr. Hobsbawm dismisses the "zig-zags and turns of Comintern and Soviet policy," specifically the "about-turn of 1939-41," which "need not detain us here.""
• "While the sudden about-turn by the Obama Administration may have been a rude awakening for some folks in Calgary's Petroleum Club, in the end it only serves to reroute Canadian oil to where world markets will ultimately dictate that it flow."