Word.ws English Dictionary

climbdown

climbdown noun: a retreat or withdrawal from an earlier position or opinion; a backdown.

Noun

climbdown (plural climbdowns)

  1. (figuratively) A retreat or withdrawal from an earlier position or opinion; a backdown.
    • Thursday's court appearance as he waited for his case to be heard was a humiliating climbdown for the flamboyant Texan, who sports the clipped mustache and Saville Row style of English aristocracy.2009 June 26, Kate Murphy, “Texas cricket mogul pleads not guilty to fraud”, in The Age
    • There will be “a cost” to the government’s climbdown on welfare changes at the budget, one of Keir Starmer’s senior ministers has said, as a leading fiscal thinktank said new tax rises appeared increasingly likely.2025 July 2, Peter Walker, “Welfare bill climbdown will have ‘a cost’ at budget, says senior minister”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Forms of climbdown

pluralclimbdowns
alternative formclimb-down

Origin of climbdown

From climb + down.

Questions about climbdown

What does climbdown mean?
Climbdown means a retreat or withdrawal from an earlier position or opinion; a backdown.
What part of speech is climbdown?
Climbdown is a noun.
What is the plural of climbdown?
The plural of climbdown is climbdowns.

Words near climbdown in the dictionary

  1. climb-out
  2. climb-outs
  3. climbability
  4. climbable
  5. climbazole
  6. climbdown
  7. climbdowns
  8. climbed
  9. climbed down
  10. climbed into
  11. climbed on the bandwagon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: climbdown (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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