hanging back
hanging back is the present participle and gerund of hang back.
Meaning of hang back
Verb
hang back (third-person singular simple present hangs back, present participle hanging back, simple past and past participle hung back)
- To wait; to falter; to avoid proceeding through reluctance.
- '[…] Perhaps just at present he may be undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give, will fix him, in spite of himself […]'1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XI, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume II, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC
Questions about hanging back
- What is hanging back the present participle and gerund of?
- Hanging back is the present participle and gerund of hang back.
Words near hanging back in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hanging back (page history and authors); hang 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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Cite this entry: “hanging back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hanging_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.