Word.ws English Dictionary

rear back

rear back verb: to stand on two rear legs, as an aggressive or fearful gesture.

Verb

rear back (third-person singular simple present rears back, present participle rearing back, simple past and past participle reared back)

  1. (usually a horse) To stand on two rear legs, as an aggressive or fearful gesture.
  2. (broadly) To stand, pull back or otherwise reposition oneself, often as a sudden response to a change or in preparation for an imminent reaction.

Forms of rear back

third-person singular presentrears back
present participlerearing back
past participlereared back
pastreared back

Questions about rear back

What does rear back mean?
Rear back means to stand on two rear legs, as an aggressive or fearful gesture.
What part of speech is rear back?
Rear back is a verb.
What is the past tense of rear back?
The past tense of rear back is reared back.

Words near rear back in the dictionary

  1. rear admiral lower half
  2. rear admiral upper half
  3. rear admirals
  4. rear admirals (lower half)
  5. rear admirals (upper half)
  6. rear back
  7. rear double biceps
  8. rear echelon
  9. rear echelons
  10. rear end
  11. rear ends

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rear 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.

Last updated:

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