Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To speak spitefully or slanderously about (another).
- intransitive verb To speak spitefully or slanderously about a person.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To injure morally in a manner comparable to biting from behind; attack the character or reputation of secretly; censure, slander, or speak evil of in absence: rarely with a thing as object.
- To slander or speak evil of the absent.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To wound by clandestine detraction; to censure meanly or spitefully (an absent person); to slander or speak evil of (one absent).
- intransitive verb To censure or revile the absent.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To make
spiteful slanderous ordefamatory statements about someone. - verb informal To attack from behind or when out of
earshot . - verb To speak badly of an
absent individual. - noun One who engages in backbiting; a
backbiter .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb say mean things
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Wherefore, properly speaking, to backbite is to speak ill of an absent person in order to blacken his good name.
Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province Aquinas Thomas
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Now who is that so base and ungrateful as to rise from a table where such delicious victuals are served and "backbite" the neighbor who prepares it?
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It has just about started realizing, after much needless suffering of its own from blowback and backbite, that surviving the whirlwind of globalization takes smarts rather than brute force.
Vamsee Juluri: Indophobia: The Real Elephant in the Living Room 2010
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It has just about started realizing, after much needless suffering of its own from blowback and backbite, that surviving the whirlwind of globalization takes smarts rather than brute force.
Indophobia: The Real Elephant in the Living Room Vamsee Juluri 2010
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Due to the fact that they are prone to backbite each other I keep my words very short to them.
Zebratown Greg Donaldson 2010
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It has just about started realizing, after much needless suffering of its own from blowback and backbite, that surviving the whirlwind of globalization takes smarts rather than brute force.
Vamsee Juluri: Indophobia: The Real Elephant in the Living Room 2010
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It has just about started realizing, after much needless suffering of its own from blowback and backbite, that surviving the whirlwind of globalization takes smarts rather than brute force.
Vamsee Juluri: Indophobia: The Real Elephant in the Living Room Vamsee Juluri 2010
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He points out shortfalls in his opponents platforms and gets called 'negative' for it, while his opponents barf up crap and name call and backbite and are called geniuses.
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Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom thou so much abhorrest, that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite, whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others.
Letter to a Friend 2007
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Were you, like me, brought up to be graceful? don't give them the satisfaction, don't backbite, don't bite back.
Archive 2007-01-01 Geraldine Moorkens Byrne 2007
brtom commented on the word backbite
Oh! there’s that disagreeable lover of mine, Sir Benjamin Backbite, has just called at my guardian’s, with his odious uncle, Crabtree
Sheridan, School for Scandal
January 6, 2008