Word.ws English Dictionary

talk back

talk back verb: to reply impertinently or rudely; to answer in a cheeky or rude manner.

Verb

talk back (third-person singular simple present talks back, present participle talking back, simple past and past participle talked back)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive, often) To reply impertinently or rudely; to answer in a cheeky or rude manner.
    • Jane talked back a little too often.
    • Jane talked back to most of her teachers.
    Synonyms:
    backtalk
  2. (idiomatic) To return disrespect.
    Synonyms:
    answer back

talk back meaning in Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

talk back in Bengali

অপ্রাসঙ্গিকভাবে, অশোভনভাবে উত্তর দেওয়া, অশ্রদ্ধা ফিরিয়ে দেওয়া

talk back in Malayalam

answer back, be impertinent, be cheeky
തിരിച്ചുപറയുക, തർക്കുത്തരം പറയുക, ധിക്കാരമായി സംസാരിക്കുക, കേട്ടതി ശേഷം പറയുക, ഒറ്റ പറയുക, ഒറ്റയ്ക്കൊറ്റക്കു പറയുക

talk back in Kannada

ಎದುರಾಡು, ಒರಟಾಗಿ ಪ್ರತ್ಯುತ್ತರ ಕೊಡು, ಎದುರುತ್ತರ ನೀಡು

Synonyms of talk back

Forms of talk back

third-person singular presenttalks back
present participletalking back
past participletalked back
pasttalked back

Words formed from talk back

Questions about talk back

What does talk back mean?
Talk back means to reply impertinently or rudely; to answer in a cheeky or rude manner.
What is talk back in Bengali?
Talk back in Bengali is অপ্রাসঙ্গিকভাবে, অশোভনভাবে উত্তর দেওয়া, অশ্রদ্ধা ফিরিয়ে দেওয়া. See Talk back meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is talk back?
Talk back is a verb.
What is the past tense of talk back?
The past tense of talk back is talked back.

Words near talk back in the dictionary

  1. talk aloud protocol
  2. talk aloud protocols
  3. talk and die syndrome
  4. talk around
  5. talk at
  6. talk back
  7. talk big
  8. talk box
  9. talk boxes
  10. talk cock
  11. talk dirty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: talk back (page history and authors); talk back (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); talk back (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); talk back (Kannada Wiktionary) (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-talk back.ogg.

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