Word.ws English Dictionary

hits back

hits back is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hit back.

Meaning of hit back

Verb

hit back (third-person singular simple present hits back, present participle hitting back, simple past and past participle hit back)

  1. (intransitive) To retaliate
    • The Baggies almost hit back instantly when Graham Dorrans broke from midfield and pulled the trigger from 15 yards but Paul Robinson did superbly to tip the Scot's drive around the post.2010 December 28, Kevin Darlin, “West Brom 1 - 3 Blackburn”, in BBC
  2. (slang, transitive, African-American Vernacular) To return a missed phone call with (someone).

Questions about hits back

What is hits back the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Hits back is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hit back.

Words near hits back in the dictionary

  1. hits a stain
  2. hits a wall
  3. hits above one's weight
  4. hits and runs
  5. hits away
  6. hits back
  7. hits below one's weight
  8. hits below the belt
  9. hits bottom
  10. hits different
  11. hits home

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hits back (page history and authors); hit 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: “hits back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hits_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.