back to the wall
back to the wall noun: a very difficult situation with no beneficial options available for action.
Noun
back to the wall (plural backs to the wall)
- A very difficult situation with no beneficial options available for action.
- From this place—so he told himself—had emanated that policy of extortion, oppression and injustice that little by little had shouldered the ranchers from their rights, till, their backs to the wall, exasperated and despairing they had turned and fought and died.1901, Frank Norris, chapter 8, in The Octopus
- Bernald felt that his extreme docility in such matters was proportioned to the force of resistance which, for nearly half a life-time, had kept him, with his back to the wall, fighting alone against the powers of darkness.1910, Edith Wharton, “The Legend”, in Tales of Men and Ghosts
Forms of back to the wall
| plural | backs to the wall |
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Questions about back to the wall
- What does back to the wall mean?
- Back to the wall means a very difficult situation with no beneficial options available for action.
- What part of speech is back to the wall?
- Back to the wall is a noun.
- What is the plural of back to the wall?
- The plural of back to the wall is backs to the wall.
Words near back to the wall in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: back to the wall (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-back to the wall.ogg.
Cite this entry: “back to the wall.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_to_the_wall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.