Word.ws English Dictionary

falls back on

falls back on is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 falls back on

What is falls back on the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Falls back on is the third-person singular simple present indicative of fall back on.

Words near falls back on in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: falls 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.

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Cite this entry: “falls back on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/falls_back_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.