Word.ws English Dictionary

fell behind

fell behind is the simple past 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 fell behind

What is fell behind the simple past of?
Fell behind is the simple past of fall behind.

Words near fell behind in the dictionary

  1. fell away
  2. fell back
  3. fell back into
  4. fell back on
  5. fell back upon
  6. fell behind
  7. fell below
  8. fell between the cracks
  9. fell between two stools
  10. fell by the wayside
  11. fell down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fell 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: “fell behind.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fell_behind. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.