Word.ws English Dictionary

thrown back

thrown back is the past participle 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 thrown back

What is thrown back the past participle of?
Thrown back is the past participle of throw back.

Words near thrown back in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thrown 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: “thrown back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thrown_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.