clawback
clawback noun: a rule that permits a party to take back evidentiary materials that were mistakenly turned over to the other party but to which the other party would not have been entitled.
Noun
clawback (countable and uncountable, plural clawbacks)
- A rule that permits a party to take back evidentiary materials that were mistakenly turned over to the other party but to which the other party would not have been entitled.
- Money that a party is entitled to keep under one tax provision but is taken by another tax provision.
- Any recovery of a performance-related payment based on discovery that the performance was not genuine.
- The airline got a clawback provision in the event of failure of the engines to meet fuel-consumption targets.
- Synonyms:
- malus
- A flatterer or sycophant.
- Take hede of theſe claubackes, theſe venemous people that wil come to you, that will folowe like Gnatoes and Paraſites, if you folowe them, you are oute of your boke.1549 March 25 (Gregorian calendar), Hughe Latymer [i.e., Hugh Latimer], Augustine Bernher, compiler, “[27 Sermons Preached by the Ryght Reuerende Father in God and Constant Matir of Iesus Christe...
Synonyms of clawback
Forms of clawback
| plural | clawbacks |
|---|
Origin of clawback
Deverbal from claw back. In the financial senses, refers to something being "clawed back", or reclaimed; in the sense of a flatterer, it suggests the idea of a person's back being scratched (see scratch someone's back).
Questions about clawback
- What does clawback mean?
- Clawback means a rule that permits a party to take back evidentiary materials that were mistakenly turned over to the other party but to which the other party would not have been entitled.
- What part of speech is clawback?
- Clawback is a noun.
- What is the plural of clawback?
- The plural of clawback is clawbacks.
Words near clawback in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: clawback (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: “clawback.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clawback. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
