blench

And for those who blench and tremble at the thought of audience participation, take a breath.

Some might blench at being told how complex systems “evolve in both deterministic and stochastic ways”; might ‘predictable and random’ have sufficed?

But wherever the mûmakil came there the horses would not go, but blenched and swerved away; and the great monsters were unfought, and stood like towers of defence, and the Haradrim rallied about them.

This may cause some fans to blench, but it’s in keeping with some of the character’s adventures as written by Don McGregor in the 1970s, when King T’Challa took on the Ku Klux Klan.

Indeed, again and again, I found myself reading and agreeing with Thomas, however much I blenched at the idea of making novels out of "superobjectives", "thematic questions" and "seed words".