Word.ws English Dictionary

on the back burner

on the back burner prepositional phrase: not immediate; inactive; receiving or requiring less than full or regular attention.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Not immediate; inactive; receiving or requiring less than full or regular attention.
    • That project is on the back burner until we deal with higher priorities.
    • After some years sweating on the back burner of show business, Ms. Brier, 28, has found instant success on the social media platform of the moment, TikTok.2023 March 14, Alexandra Jacobs, “Your Annoying Roommate Is Slaying on TikTok”, in The New York Times

Antonyms of on the back burner

Questions about on the back burner

What does on the back burner mean?
On the back burner means not immediate; inactive; receiving or requiring less than full or regular attention.
What part of speech is on the back burner?
On the back burner is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the back burner in the dictionary

  1. on that score
  2. on the
  3. on the air
  4. on the alert
  5. on the anvil
  6. on the back burner
  7. on the back foot
  8. on the back of
  9. on the ball
  10. on the bash
  11. on the basis of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the back burner (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-on the back burner.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on the back burner.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_back_burner. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.