Word.ws English Dictionary

clawing back

clawing back is the present participle and gerund of claw back.

Meaning of claw back

Verb

claw back (third-person singular simple present claws back, present participle clawing back, simple past and past participle clawed back)

  1. (transitive) To recover or retake, with great effort, something that was lost, often by a government or official agency.
    • I was initially refused a refund, but eventually managed to claw back part of the money.

Questions about clawing back

What is clawing back the present participle and gerund of?
Clawing back is the present participle and gerund of claw back.

Words near clawing back in the dictionary

  1. clawhammers
  2. clawhand
  3. clawiest
  4. clawing
  5. clawing away
  6. clawing back
  7. clawing off
  8. clawingly
  9. clawings
  10. clawless
  11. clawlessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clawing back (page history and authors); claw 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.

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