Word.ws English Dictionary

pushed back

pushed back is the simple past and past participle of push back.

Meaning of push back

Verb

push back (third-person singular simple present pushes back, present participle pushing back, simple past and past participle pushed back)

  1. To refute or argue against a position or an accusation; to express one's own view on a situation.
    • The scandal is growing legs. We need to start pushing back.
  2. To postpone.
    • The Friday meeting keeps getting pushed back to the following week.
  3. (migration) To summarily expel asylum seekers, especially in violation of the principle of non-refoulement.
    • EU member states have used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders during the pandemic[…]2021 May 5, Lorenzo Tondo, “Revealed: 2,000 refugee deaths linked to illegal EU pushbacks”, in The Guardian
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see push, back.

Questions about pushed back

What is pushed back the simple past and past participle of?
Pushed back is the simple past and past participle of push back.

Words near pushed back in the dictionary

  1. pushed along
  2. pushed and shoved
  3. pushed around
  4. pushed aside
  5. pushed away
  6. pushed back
  7. pushed daisies
  8. pushed down
  9. pushed forward
  10. pushed in
  11. pushed into the long grass

Source and license

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