Backpedal
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 An act of backpedalling (in any sense).
"He should come out of his backpedal and turn to run only when a receiver threatens to get behind him in the zone."
- 1 To pedal backwards on a bicycle. intransitive
"The road was on a hill and the boy was going down the slope, and as he flashed by he started backpedalling very quickly so that the free-wheeling mechanism of his bike made a loud whirring sound."
- 2 modify one's opinion, make it less strong wordnet
- 3 To step backwards. intransitive
"The player had to backpedal before catching the ball."
- 4 step backwards, in boxing wordnet
- 5 To distance oneself from an earlier claim or statement; back off from an idea. idiomatic, intransitive
"Though initially adopting a hard-line stance, the politician soon started to backpedal."
Show 1 more definition
- 6 pedal backwards on a bicycle wordnet
Example
More examples"The road was on a hill and the boy was going down the slope, and as he flashed by he started backpedalling very quickly so that the free-wheeling mechanism of his bike made a loud whirring sound."
Etymology
From back + pedal.
Related phrases
More for "backpedal"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.