Word.ws English Dictionary

fighting back

fighting back is the present participle and gerund of fight back.

Meaning of fight back

Verb

fight back (third-person singular simple present fights back, present participle fighting back, simple past and past participle fought back)

  1. (intransitive) To defend oneself by fighting.
    • The bully hadn't been expecting his victim to fight back, and now the bully has quadriplegia.
    1. (intransitive) To counterattack (counterstrike); to resist an attack or respond after one.
      • During the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. Navy began fighting back, and it wouldn't stop until August 1945.
  2. (transitive) to repress; to struggle to repress.
    • fight back tears
  3. (intransitive) To overturn a losing deficit.

Questions about fighting back

What is fighting back the present participle and gerund of?
Fighting back is the present participle and gerund of fight back.

Words near fighting back in the dictionary

  1. fightiest
  2. fightin'
  3. fighting
  4. fighting a losing battle
  5. fighting a rearguard action
  6. fighting back
  7. Fighting Bob
  8. fighting chair
  9. fighting chairs
  10. fighting chance
  11. fighting chances

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fighting back (page history and authors); fight back (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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