Word.ws English Dictionary

bite back

bite back verb: to retaliate; to give a sharp retort.

Verb

bite back (third-person singular simple present bites back, present participle biting back, simple past bit back, past participle bitten back)

  1. (intransitive) To retaliate; to give a sharp retort.
  2. (transitive) To repress (an emotion or a response).
    • He bit back his anger and managed a courteous reply.
    • No one bites back as hard on their anger / None of my pain and woe / Can show through1971, The Who, “Behind Blue Eyes”, in Who's Next

Forms of bite back

third-person singular presentbites back
present participlebiting back
pastbit back
past participlebitten back

Questions about bite back

What does bite back mean?
Bite back means to retaliate; to give a sharp retort.
What part of speech is bite back?
Bite back is a verb.
What is the past tense of bite back?
The past tense of bite back is bit back.

Words near bite back in the dictionary

  1. BITD
  2. bite
  3. bite and smile
  4. bite at the apple
  5. bite at the cherry
  6. bite back
  7. bite cell
  8. bite cells
  9. bite down
  10. bite in
  11. bite in the arse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bite back (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:

Cite this entry: “bite back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bite_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.