Word.ws English Dictionary

left behind

left behind is the simple past and past participle of leave behind.

Meaning of leave behind

Verb

leave behind (third-person singular simple present leaves behind, present participle leaving behind, simple past and past participle left behind)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To abandon.
    • We left behind our luggage at the hotel.
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To forget about.
    • We (accidentally) left behind our bags at the airport.
  3. (idiomatic, transitive) To not live longer than; to be survived by.
    • Mrs Johnston died at thirty, and left behind three young daughters.
  4. (idiomatic, transitive) To leave (a trace of something).
    • The wound I got in my car accident left behind a massive scar.
  5. (idiomatic, transitive) To outdo; to progress faster than (someone or something else).
    • This product leaves behind all its competitors in the market.
  6. (idiomatic, transitive) To pass.
    • As soon as we made our way onto the highway, we left the skyscrapers behind us.

See all 7 meanings of leave behind

Noun capitalized: Left Behind

Left Behind (plural Left Behinds)

  1. A usually socially conservative member of the working class whose income is stagnating or falling in purchasing power.
    • For the Left Behinds, Kennedy was evoking the most traditional values: patriotism, discipline, sacrifice for the common welfare.1983, David Lebedoff, The New Elite: The Death of Democracy, →ISBN, page 31
    • The New Elite and the Left Behinds are not necessarily synonymous with other pairs in confrontation: liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, upper-middle class and lower-middle class.2004, David Lebedoff, The Uncivil War: How a New Elite is Destroying Our Democracy, →ISBN

Forms of left behind

pluralLeft Behinds
alternative formleft-behind

Questions about left behind

What does left behind mean?
Left behind means a usually socially conservative member of the working class whose income is stagnating or falling in purchasing power.
What is left behind the simple past and past participle of?
Left behind is the simple past and past participle of leave behind.
What part of speech is left behind?
Left behind is a noun.
What is the plural of left behind?
The plural of left behind is Left Behinds.

Words near left behind in the dictionary

  1. left back
  2. left backs
  3. left bank
  4. left banks
  5. left be
  6. left behind
  7. Left Behinds
  8. left bower
  9. left bowers
  10. left bracket
  11. left brackets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: left behind (page history and authors); Left Behind (page history and authors); leave behind (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: “left behind.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/left_behind. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.