Word.ws English Dictionary

back to basics

back to basics adverb: back to fundamental principles.

Adverb

back to basics (not comparable)

  1. back to fundamental principles
    • You can't teach them calculus when they can't add up; let's get back to basics.
    • While Strachan’s men have succeeded in adopting a more expansive, fluid style of play in recent times, it was very much a case of back to basics for this one.2014 November 14, Stephen Halliday, “Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero”, in The Scotsman

Noun

back to basics (uncountable)

  1. (UK) A conscious return to principles such as self-respect, decency and honesty; especially the discredited policy of the Conservative government in the 1990s.

Forms of back to basics

alternative formback-to-basics

Origin of back to basics

From back + to + basics.

Questions about back to basics

What does back to basics mean?
Back to basics means back to fundamental principles.
What part of speech is back to basics?
Back to basics can be an adverb or a noun.

Words near back to basics in the dictionary

  1. back to back
  2. back to back jack
  3. back to back jacks
  4. back to back ticket
  5. back to back tickets
  6. back to basics
  7. back to front
  8. back to nature
  9. back to square one
  10. back to the drawing board
  11. Back to the Future Day

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back to basics (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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