Word.ws English Dictionary

stabbing in the back

stabbing in the back is the present participle and gerund of stab in the back.

Meaning of stab in the back

Verb

stab in the back (third-person singular simple present stabs in the back, present participle stabbing in the back, simple past and past participle stabbed in the back)

  1. (idiomatic) To betray (somebody).
    • “What concerns me,” Ryder said, as if they’d been having an entirely different conversation, “is that you’re angry right now, Harper. Menoris was a teammate and you trusted her; I get that. Everyone’s been stabbed in the back at some point or another. But are you going to Illium to complete the...2017 November, N. K. Jemisin, Mac Walters, chapter 5, in Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation, 1st edition (Science Fiction), Titan Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 96

See all 2 meanings of stab in the back

Questions about stabbing in the back

What is stabbing in the back the present participle and gerund of?
Stabbing in the back is the present participle and gerund of stab in the back.

Words near stabbing in the back in the dictionary

  1. stabbiness
  2. stabbing
  3. stabbing a guess
  4. stabbing board
  5. stabbing boards
  6. stabbing in the back
  7. stabbingly
  8. stabbings
  9. stabboard
  10. stabby
  11. Stabenow

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stabbing in the back (page history and authors); stab in the 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: “stabbing in the back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stabbing_in_the_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.