Word.ws English Dictionary

force someone's back to the wall

force someone's back to the wall verb: to put someone under a lot of pressure; to put someone in a very difficult situation.

Verb

force someone's back to the wall (third-person singular simple present forces someone's back to the wall, present participle forcing someone's back to the wall, simple past and past participle forced someone's back to the wall)

  1. To put someone under a lot of pressure; to put someone in a very difficult situation.
    • You are forcing our backs to the wall, Mr. President. The time is not far off when, living for God’s reign on earth, we shall have to stand against you.1947, Friends’ Intelligencer, volume 104, page 366
    • He didn’t want to do it this way, but she’d forced his back to the wall.1991, Stella Cameron, Snow Angels, →ISBN, page 35

Forms of force someone's back to the wall

third-person singular presentforces someone's back to the wall
present participleforcing someone's back to the wall
past participleforced someone's back to the wall
pastforced someone's back to the wall

Questions about force someone's back to the wall

What does force someone's back to the wall mean?
Force someone's back to the wall means to put someone under a lot of pressure; to put someone in a very difficult situation.
What part of speech is force someone's back to the wall?
Force someone's back to the wall is a verb.
What is the past tense of force someone's back to the wall?
The past tense of force someone's back to the wall is forced someone's back to the wall.

Words near force someone's back to the wall in the dictionary

  1. force pumps
  2. force quit
  3. force quits
  4. force quitted
  5. force quitting
  6. force someone's back to the wall
  7. force someone's hand
  8. force the pace
  9. force the voucher
  10. force-fed
  11. force-feed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: force someone's back to the wall (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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