Word.ws English Dictionary

hitting back

hitting back is the present participle and gerund 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 hitting back

What is hitting back the present participle and gerund of?
Hitting back is the present participle and gerund of hit back.

Words near hitting back in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hitting 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: “hitting back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hitting_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.