beat back

phrasal verb

beat back; beaten back or beat back; beating back; beats back

: to force (someone) to go back or to retreat by fighting

Our troops were beaten back by enemy forces.

Police used batons to beat the protesters back.

Examples of beat back in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Unlike Biden administration officials who have urged Ukrainian leaders not to attack oil refineries and other energy targets on Russian soil, Cameron said that Britain supported Ukraine’s right to take a wide range of actions to beat back the Kremlin. —Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, 10 Apr. 2024

But in the following months, Bragg beat back legal challenges. —Michael Rothfeld Emily Woo Zeller Krish Seenivasan David Mason, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2024

Time after time, this damn disease was beaten back to hell by a man who had no give-up in him, a man who should be a Hall of Famer, a man who did so much for three of the game’s franchises. —Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Apr. 2024

With a midnight deadline looming, Senate leaders beat back efforts by conservative Republicans to enact deep spending cuts and restrictions on migration. —Jordan Fabian, Fortune, 23 Mar. 2024

Efforts to beat back false narratives and conspiracy theories — already a difficult task — must now also contend with waning moderation efforts at social media platforms, political pushback, fast-advancing artificial intelligence technology and broad information fatigue. —Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 1 Apr. 2024

But Democrats also celebrated what was not included in the bill, beating back Republican demands for conservative policy add-ons. —USA TODAY, 23 Mar. 2024

For the chair of that committee, Rep. Jim Pressel ― the Republican from Rolling Prairie who beat back the proposal year after year previously ― this was a way to close the books on the issue once and for all. —Kayla Dwyer, The Indianapolis Star, 15 Mar. 2024

But his late momentum wasn’t enough to beat back the Trump machine that labeled him a RINO, or Republican in Name Only. LaRose, meanwhile, struggled to gain traction despite being the only candidate to hold statewide office. —Haley Bemiller, USA TODAY, 20 Mar. 2024