Even young Danforth, with his nervous breakdown, has not flinched ...

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longnguyen1994

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Since our return we have all constantly worked to discourage antarctic exploration, and have kept certain doubts and guesses to ourselves with splendid unity and faithfulness. Even young Danforth, with his nervous breakdown, has not flinched or babbled to his doctors — indeed, as I have said, there is one thing he thinks he alone saw which he will not tell even me, though I think it would help his psychological state if he would consent to do so.
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Source: "At the Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft

I'm a bit confused about the word "flinched" in this context. I don't see any definition on the wordref site that could fit this. How should I interpret this?

And also, from a grammatical aspect, does "flinch" here goes with "doctor", like the word "babble"? I don't think "flinch" goes with the preposition "to", but the way the phrase "flinched or babbled" is structured make it look like they both aim toward the object "doctor".

Note: cross-posted here, but no one could make sense of the word: https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/flinched.4095893/#post-21045506
 
Context is always important. Reread the sentence that comes before the "flinched" sentence. It tells you all you need to know.
 
Tarheel said:
Context is always important. Reread the sentence that comes before the "flinched" sentence. It tells you all you need to know.
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I have, and it still doesn't make sense. If it makes sense to you, could you explain it to me?
 
longnguyen1994 said:
I'm a bit confused about the word "flinched" in this context. ...
Click to expand...
This is my take.

People flinch or wince easily when they have a nervous breakdown. Young Danforth has a nervous breakdown. Even so, he has managed not to flinch--by a touch, by a noise, by a shadow etc--so people won't ask him what's wrong, which won't lead to further prodding, which often results in a person telling the source of his/her breakdown--in Danforth's case, the secret they want to keep.

longnguyen1994 said:
And also, from a grammatical aspect, does "flinch" here goes with "doctor", like the word "babble"?
Click to expand...
Even young Danforth, with his nervous breakdown, has not flinched.
Even young Danforth, with his nervous breakdown, has not babbled to his doctors. (This also means Danforth has managed to keep secret.)
 
dunchee said:
This is my take.

People flinch or wince easily when they have a nervous breakdown. Young Danforth has a nervous breakdown. Even so, he has managed not to flinch--by a touch, by a noise, by a shadow etc--so people won't ask him what's wrong, which won't lead to further prodding, which often results in a person telling the source of his/her breakdown--in Danforth's case, the secret they want to keep.

Even young Danforth, with his nervous breakdown, has not flinched.
Even young Danforth, with his nervous breakdown, has not babbled to his doctors. (This also means Danforth has managed to keep THE secret.)
Click to expand...
Exactly!
 
You might have thought that if they wanted to discourage people from going there they would have told people how horrible the experience was, but they didn't do that. Instead they decided to keep it to themselves.

Context is everything.
 
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