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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
towards
preposition
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
feel loyalty towards sb/sth
▪ Marco felt an intense loyalty to his native country.
go a long way towards (=will help to reach a goal)
▪ Your contributions will go a long way towards helping children in need .
make a gesture towards sb/sth (=do something to show that you have some respect for someone or something)
▪ The drinks industry has made a gesture towards reducing alcohol misuse by setting up a research group.
move towards a climax
▪ Political tensions were moving towards a climax.
move towards independence (=gradually achieve it over a period of time)
▪ The country was slowly moving towards independence.
work towards a goal
▪ We are all working towards similar goals.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
be oriented to/towards/around sth/sb
▪ All the computers we consider are general-purpose, at least in theory, although they may be oriented towards particular application areas.
▪ Attention will be oriented to the imagery and assumptions about reproductive physiology on which methods of contraception and their evaluation are based.
▪ First we were oriented towards the orientation building.
▪ In contrast, pragmatic parties hold more flexible goals and are oriented to moderate or incremental policy change.
▪ Management involvement in internal operations and problems must be oriented to the environment, its opportunities and demands.
▪ On the one hand, the questions are oriented towards exposing the discipline, bringing into the open its hidden character.
▪ The former are oriented to specialized resources while the latter focus on outputs.
▪ This project is oriented towards education.
be well/favourably/kindly disposed (to/towards sb/sth)
▪ He said Bonn was favourably disposed to such a conference if it were well prepared.
▪ I think maybe she had seen the television programmes and was favourably disposed.
▪ It is expected that he will be favourably disposed towards the report's proposals.
▪ Jackson was well disposed towards journalists of left-wing sympathies.
▪ The best that can be hoped for, on their behalf, is that human beings are kindly disposed towards them.
▪ The majority were favourably disposed, some were ambivalent and a few highly critical of the messages and their style.
go a long way towards doing sth
▪ And Monday's game will go a long way towards determining Wright's future.
▪ For it was he who arranged the finance which went a long way towards putting the station on the air.
▪ Friedman's statement of the natural rate hypothesis went a long way towards reconciling such evidence with basic classical theory.
▪ In doing so it can go a long way towards lifting the depression which has afflicted too many teachers in recent years.
▪ Schema theory can go a long way towards explaining the sender's choice and arrangement of information in communication.
▪ The new, improved materials available have gone a long way towards extending the lifespan of today's flat roof.
▪ This decision goes a long way towards demonstrating the untenability of the marital-rape exemption in modern times.
▪ This will also go a long way towards preventing your neighbour complaining about the noise you make.
go some way towards doing sth
▪ But Mala had gone some way towards the opposite.
▪ Funding for public works, including community-based arts projects, went some way towards alleviating mass unemployment.
▪ However, the Commission has recently issued a notice which goes some way towards defining the elements of them.
▪ It is proposed that hypertext systems go some way towards providing students with alternative structures for organizing their knowledge of electronic publishing.
▪ Most of the old great Elf towns date from this period and it goes some way towards accounting for their remoteness.
▪ The theory also goes some way towards answering the question of why people speak indirectly.
▪ This goes some way towards typing the organism causing the disease.
▪ Will he go some way towards reviewing the process?
tend towards sth
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Glancing towards me, he started to laugh.
▪ If you walk along the river bank towards Skipton you come to a bridge.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Towards

Towards \To"wards\, prep. & adv. See Toward.

Towards

Toward \To"ward\, Towards \To"wards\ adv. Near; at hand; in state of preparation.

Do you hear sught, sir, of a battle toward ?
--Shak.

We have a trifling foolish banquet Towards.
--Shak.

Towards

Toward \To"ward\, Towards \To"wards\, prep.[AS. ? impending, imminent, future, toward, ? towards. See To, and - ward, wards.]

  1. In the direction of; to.

    He set his face toward the wilderness.
    --Num. xxiv. 1.

    The waves make towards" the pebbled shore.
    --Shak.

  2. With direction to, in a moral sense; with respect or reference to; regarding; concerning.

    His eye shall be evil toward his brother.
    --Deut. xxviii. 54.

    Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men.
    --Acts xxiv. 16.

  3. Tending to; in the direction of; in behalf of.

    This was the first alarm England received towards any trouble.
    --Clarendom.

  4. Near; about; approaching to.

    I am toward nine years older since I left you.
    --Swift.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
towards

Old English toweards, from toweard (adj.) "coming, facing, approaching" (see toward) + adverbial genitive ending.

Wiktionary
towards

a. Near; at hand; in state of preparation; toward. adv. In the direction of something (indicated by context). prep. (alternative form of from=UK toward English)

WordNet

Usage examples of "towards".

It came to him with the force of a revelation that Cass excelled in everything she did, and that had she not married him all these talents would have died aborning This aroused in him a fierce protectiveness towards her which he had not suspected he possessed.

Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so far as the conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent from the instrument, the body, so that it need not forever have its Act upon or through this inferior.

The disk pulled us towards it at twenty-one gee, the acceleration of the ship pulled us away from it at twenty gee, and we sat there in the middle at a snug and comfortable standard gravity.

The city was accessible only by a narrow peninsula towards the west, as the other three sides were surrounded by the Adige, a rapid river, which covered the province of Venetia, from whence the besieged derived an inexhaustible supply of men and provisions.

Their skilful guide, changing his plan of operations, then conducted the army by a longer circuit, but through a fertile territory, towards the head of the Euphrates, where the infant river is reduced to a shallow and accessible stream.

I certainly did not act towards them with a true sense of honesty, but if the reader to whom I confess myself is acquainted with the world and with the spirit of society, I entreat him to think before judging me, and perhaps I may meet with some indulgence at his hands.

And though he dared not to take any steps towards his further grandeur, lest he should expose himself to the jealousy of so penetrating a prince as Henry, he still hoped that, by accumulating riches and power, and by acquiring popularity, he might in time be able to open his way to the throne.

Towards the end of the year 1728 my mother returned to Venice with her husband, and as she had become an actress she continued her artistic life.

No doubt the eternally self-identical may have potentiality and be self-led to self-realization, but even in this case the being considered as actualized is of higher order than the being considered as merely capable of actualization and moving towards a desired Term.

Rather, it is the attitude that someone who has never been addicted to heroin would have towards a heroin addict.

Caderousse, waving his hand in token of adieu to Danglars, and bending his steps towards the Allees de Meillan, moving his head to and fro, and muttering as he went, after the manner of one whose mind was overcharged with one absorbing idea.

Again it is the tip, as stated by Ciesielski, though denied by others, which is sensitive to the attraction of gravity, and by transmission causes the adjoining parts of the radicle to bend towards the centre of the earth.

It was ascertained in several cases that this sensitiveness resides in the tip, which transmits an influence causing the adjoining upper part to bend in opposition to geotropism towards the moist object.

In the south-east Rundle and Brabant were slowly advancing, while the Boers who faced them fell back towards Lindley.

He had, in fact, crossed the designs of no less a power than the German Empire, he had blundered into the hot focus of Welt-Politik, he was drifting helplessly towards the great Imperial secret, the immense aeronautic park that had been established at a headlong pace in Franconia to develop silently, swiftly, and on an immense scale the great discoveries of Hunstedt and Stossel, and so to give Germany before all other nations a fleet of airships, the air power and the Empire of the world.