Word.ws English Dictionary

threw back

threw back is the simple past of throw back.

Meaning of throw back

Verb

throw back (third-person singular simple present throws back, present participle throwing back, simple past threw back, past participle thrown back)

  1. (transitive) To hinder the development of something.
  2. (intransitive) To revert to an earlier stage of development.
    • The Century
      A large proportion of the steerage passengers throw back to their Darwinian ancestry.
  3. (transitive) To retort.
    • She jumped to her feet and began stalking away. “Going to cost me fifteen dollars to clean this outfit,” she threw back over her shoulder.2011, Delores Haltom, The Stonecutter: How the Word Became Flesh, page 120
  4. (transitive) To drink quickly, especially alcoholic beverages.
    • We threw back drinks until the next morning.
    Synonyms:
    toss off
  5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw, back.
    • I threw back my head and laughed uproariously.

Questions about threw back

What is threw back the simple past of?
Threw back is the simple past of throw back.

Words near threw back in the dictionary

  1. threw an ant into a sty
  2. threw an eye
  3. threw aside
  4. threw away
  5. threw away the key
  6. threw back
  7. threw BBs
  8. threw by
  9. threw caution to the wind
  10. threw cold water on
  11. threw down

Source and license

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