put back

Verb

put back (third-person singular simple present puts back, present participle putting back, simple past and past participle put back)

1. (transitive) To return something to its original place.
   • He carefully put the vase back on the shelf.
   • Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. […] She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her...1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
2. (intransitive) To turn back; to return.
   • The French […] had put back to Toulon.1813, Robert Southey, The Life of Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson
3. (transitive) To postpone an arranged event or appointment.
   • The meeting has been put back to 5.00 pm.
4. (idiomatic, transitive) To drink fast; to knock down alcohol.
   • You'll need to put that drink back quickly; it's very nearly closing time.
   • Whisky he sipped at suspiciously, and still had not got an adult taste for; but wine he loved, and he put back champagne as if it were lager, with awful belches and chuckles after each glass.1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 13
5. (idiomatic, transitive) To change the time in a time zone to an earlier time.
   • Don't forget that this Sunday we put the clocks back an hour.
   • When the clocks are put forward at the introduction of summer time, the long-distance night trains automatically become one hour late, and continue to run late for the remainder of their journeys. […] Similarly, when the clocks are put back in the autumn, the night trains become one hour early.1951 June, “The Why and the Wherefore: Railways and Summer Time”, in Railway Magazine, page 429