Word.ws English Dictionary

fallen back on

fallen back on is the past participle of fall back on.

Meaning of fall back on

Verb

fall back on (third-person singular simple present falls back on, present participle falling back on, simple past fell back on, past participle fallen back on)

  1. (transitive) To turn to as a substitute; to rely on as a backup.
    • Since first tossing its cartoonish, good-time cock-rock to the masses in the early ’00s, The Darkness has always fallen back on this defense: The band is a joke, but hey, it’s a good joke. With Hot Cakes—the group’s third album, and first since reforming last year—the laughter has died. In its...2012 August 21, Jason Heller, “The Darkness: Hot Cakes (Music Review)”, in The Onion AV Club
  2. (transitive) to be blamed on.
    • If we do this, the consequences will fall back on you.

Questions about fallen back on

What is fallen back on the past participle of?
Fallen back on is the past participle of fall back on.

Words near fallen back on in the dictionary

  1. fallen at the final hurdle
  2. fallen at the last hurdle
  3. fallen away
  4. fallen back
  5. fallen back into
  6. fallen back on
  7. fallen back upon
  8. fallen behind
  9. fallen below
  10. fallen between the cracks
  11. fallen between two stools

Source and license

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