Word.ws English Dictionary

fall-back

fall-back is the alternative form of fallback.

Meaning of fallback

Noun

fallback (countable and uncountable, plural fallbacks)

  1. An act of falling back.
    • A failure of one of the rocket's first-stage engines just after liftoff would result in a destructive pad fallback.
  2. A backup plan or contingency strategy; an alternative which can be used if something goes wrong with the main plan; a recourse.
    • As a fallback, I suppose we can use typewriters if the word processing system fails.
    Synonyms:
    back-up, backup
  3. A reduction in bitumen softening point, sometimes called refluxing or overheating, in a relatively closed container.
  4. Pulverised material that falls back to earth after a nuclear explosion; fallout.
    • Particle size distributions of fallback and ejecta were determined principally by mechanical sieving and weighing.1970, Nuclear Science Abstracts, page 3595

See all 5 meanings of fallback

Forms of fall-back

pluralfall-backs

Questions about fall-back

What is fall-back the alternative form of?
Fall-back is the alternative form of fallback.

Words near fall-back in the dictionary

  1. fall willow
  2. fall wind
  3. fall winds
  4. fall woman
  5. fall women
  6. fall-back
  7. fall-backs
  8. fall-guy
  9. fall-guys
  10. fall-like
  11. fall-off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fall-back (page history and authors); fallback (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: “fall-back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fall-back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.