throwing back
throwing back is the present participle and gerund 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)
- To hinder the development of something.
- To revert to an earlier stage of development.
- The Century
A large proportion of the steerage passengers throw back to their Darwinian ancestry.
- The Century
- 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
- To drink quickly, especially alcoholic beverages.
- We threw back drinks until the next morning.
- Synonyms:
- toss off
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw, back.
- I threw back my head and laughed uproariously.
Questions about throwing back
- What is throwing back the present participle and gerund of?
- Throwing back is the present participle and gerund of throw back.
Words near throwing back in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: throwing 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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “throwing back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/throwing_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
