Word.ws English Dictionary

drop back

drop back verb: of a quarterback or other player in the backfield, to take a number of steps back from the line of scrimmage immediately after the snap or hike of the ball, to avoid defenders.

Verb

drop back (third-person singular simple present drops back, present participle dropping back, simple past and past participle dropped back)

  1. Of a quarterback or other player in the backfield, to take a number of steps back from the line of scrimmage immediately after the snap or hike of the ball, to avoid defenders.
    • The Tiger quarterback is dropping back to pass.
  2. To move to a lower (or slower) position in a race or competition; to slow down so as to meet up with someone behind oneself
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drop, back.
    • Without the ball, he was often the furthest player forward, harrying Raphaël Varane and Éder Militão and cutting off the supply to Casemiro (all of whom had wretched games). When City won the ball, meanwhile, he dropped back, slipping between the lines, demanding the ball and laying it off...2020 August 7, Jonathan Liew, “Phil Foden stars to offer Manchester City glimpse of multiple futures”, in The Guardian

Noun

drop back (plural drop backs)

  1. The act by a player in the backfield of dropping back from the line of scrimmage after the hike of the ball.
    • With his ankle injury his drop back is not pretty.

drop back meaning in Malayalam

drop back in Malayalam

get left behind, fall back, fall behind
പിന്നിലാവുക, പിന്നിലായിപ്പോവുക, പിന്നാലെ ആവുക, വിളംബിക്കുക, വൃഥാ നേരം കളയുക, വെറുതെ സമയം കളയുക

Forms of drop back

Verb
third-person singular presentdrops back
present participledropping back
past participledropped back
pastdropped back
Noun
pluraldrop backs

Questions about drop back

What does drop back mean?
Drop back means of a quarterback or other player in the backfield, to take a number of steps back from the line of scrimmage immediately after the snap or hike of the ball, to avoid defenders.
What is drop back in Malayalam?
Drop back in Malayalam is പിന്നിലാവുക, പിന്നിലായിപ്പോവുക, പിന്നാലെ ആവുക. See Drop back meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is drop back?
Drop back can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of drop back?
The past tense of drop back is dropped back.

Words near drop back in the dictionary

  1. drop astern
  2. drop at comb
  3. drop attack
  4. drop attacks
  5. drop away
  6. drop back
  7. drop backs
  8. drop bar
  9. drop bars
  10. drop bear
  11. drop bears

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drop back (page history and authors); drop back (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: “drop back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drop_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.