Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  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 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

  1. throwing away
  2. throwing away the key
  3. throwing ax
  4. throwing axe
  5. throwing axes
  6. throwing back
  7. throwing BBs
  8. throwing by
  9. throwing caution to the wind
  10. throwing cold water on
  11. throwing down

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.

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