"walk back" meaning in English

See walk back in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: walks back [present, singular, third-person], walking back [participle, present], walked back [participle, past], walked back [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} walk back (third-person singular simple present walks back, present participle walking back, simple past and past participle walked back)
  1. (transitive) To withdraw or backpedal on a statement or promise. Tags: transitive Synonyms: retract, unsay, unspeak, take back
    Sense id: en-walk_back-en-verb-N0O~RycY
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see walk, back. Derived forms: walkback [noun] Related terms: rollback [noun], roll back [verb]
    Sense id: en-walk_back-en-verb-S~fxhB7r Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English links with manual fragments, English phrasal verbs with particle (back) Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 41 59 Disambiguation of English links with manual fragments: 38 62 Disambiguation of English phrasal verbs with particle (back): 34 66

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for walk back meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "walks back",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "walking back",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "walked back",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "walked back",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "walk back (third-person singular simple present walks back, present participle walking back, simple past and past participle walked back)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2010, Greg Sargent, The Plumb Line",
          "text": "Did Obama walk back his support of Cordoba House? As you know, the Internets are alive with the claim that Obama has now walked back his support of Cordoba House, and I've gotten tons of emails telling me that my earlier praise of the speech is no longer operative. But did he really walk back what he said last night?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 June 30, Farhad Manjoo, “Democrats Have a Year to Save the Planet”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "That seemed comforting — but then the president over the weekend walked back his promise.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To withdraw or backpedal on a statement or promise."
      ],
      "id": "en-walk_back-en-verb-N0O~RycY",
      "links": [
        [
          "withdraw",
          "withdraw"
        ],
        [
          "backpedal",
          "backpedal"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive) To withdraw or backpedal on a statement or promise."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "retract"
        },
        {
          "word": "unsay"
        },
        {
          "word": "unspeak"
        },
        {
          "word": "take back"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "transitive"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "41 59",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "38 62",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English links with manual fragments",
          "parents": [
            "Links with manual fragments",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "34 66",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (back)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "_dis1": "8 92",
          "tags": [
            "noun"
          ],
          "word": "walkback"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see walk, back."
      ],
      "id": "en-walk_back-en-verb-S~fxhB7r",
      "links": [
        [
          "walk",
          "walk#English"
        ],
        [
          "back",
          "back#English"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "_dis1": "8 92",
          "tags": [
            "noun"
          ],
          "word": "rollback"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "8 92",
          "tags": [
            "verb"
          ],
          "word": "roll back"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "walk back"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English links with manual fragments",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English phrasal verbs",
    "English phrasal verbs with particle (back)",
    "English verbs"
  ],
  "derived": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "noun"
      ],
      "word": "walkback"
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  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "walks back",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "walking back",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "walked back",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "walked back",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "walk back (third-person singular simple present walks back, present participle walking back, simple past and past participle walked back)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "noun"
      ],
      "word": "rollback"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "verb"
      ],
      "word": "roll back"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English transitive verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2010, Greg Sargent, The Plumb Line",
          "text": "Did Obama walk back his support of Cordoba House? As you know, the Internets are alive with the claim that Obama has now walked back his support of Cordoba House, and I've gotten tons of emails telling me that my earlier praise of the speech is no longer operative. But did he really walk back what he said last night?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 June 30, Farhad Manjoo, “Democrats Have a Year to Save the Planet”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "That seemed comforting — but then the president over the weekend walked back his promise.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To withdraw or backpedal on a statement or promise."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "withdraw",
          "withdraw"
        ],
        [
          "backpedal",
          "backpedal"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive) To withdraw or backpedal on a statement or promise."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "retract"
        },
        {
          "word": "unsay"
        },
        {
          "word": "unspeak"
        },
        {
          "word": "take back"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "transitive"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see walk, back."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "walk",
          "walk#English"
        ],
        [
          "back",
          "back#English"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "walk back"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.