Word.ws English Dictionary

falling behind

falling behind is the present participle and gerund of fall behind.

Meaning of fall behind

Verb

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

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see fall, behind.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To be late (for a regular event)
    • You're falling behind with the rent.
  3. (intransitive) To be progressively below average in performance.
    • You could lose your job if you keep falling behind with your work.
  4. (intransitive, transitive) to fail to keep up (with)

Questions about falling behind

What is falling behind the present participle and gerund of?
Falling behind is the present participle and gerund of fall behind.

Words near falling behind in the dictionary

  1. falling away
  2. falling back
  3. falling back into
  4. falling back on
  5. falling back upon
  6. falling behind
  7. falling below
  8. falling between the cracks
  9. falling between two stools
  10. falling block
  11. falling blocks

Source and license

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