noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The changing of the tense of a verb from present to past in reported speech. countable, uncountable
2. 2
   A function on a stochastic process whose value on any random variable is the preceding random variable in the process. countable, uncountable

Verb

1. 1
   To change the tense of a verb from present to past in reported speech. transitive

Antonyms

All antonyms

foreshift

Etymology

From back + shift.

Related phrases

random variablereported speech

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.