as in to back down
to break a promise or agreement
she backed out on her offer to help with the wedding planning
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of back out
Young, unemployed family man Nick (MacKay) volunteers to take the boat back out, along with taciturn, new-in-town drifter Liam (Turner) and grizzled seadog Murgey (Francis Magee).
—
Guy Lodge, Variety, 31 Aug. 2025
Eight selective colleges signed on last spring to accept Dialogues portfolios as part of a pilot project, but two of them — Vanderbilt University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — backed out in July.
—Tyler Kingkade, NBC news, 28 Aug. 2025
Pull the zip back out and remove and dispose of any hair or other materials that are caught on the teeth.
—Daley Quinn, Southern Living, 27 Aug. 2025
However, five months later, USF backed out of the commitment, Taylor told the Miami Herald.
—Walter Villa, Miami Herald, 27 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for back out
Guy Lodge, Variety, 31 Aug. 2025
Eight selective colleges signed on last spring to accept Dialogues portfolios as part of a pilot project, but two of them — Vanderbilt University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — backed out in July.
—Tyler Kingkade, NBC news, 28 Aug. 2025
Pull the zip back out and remove and dispose of any hair or other materials that are caught on the teeth.
—Daley Quinn, Southern Living, 27 Aug. 2025
However, five months later, USF backed out of the commitment, Taylor told the Miami Herald.
—Walter Villa, Miami Herald, 27 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for back out
Recent Examples of Synonyms for back out
Verb
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For instance, a retailer running a flash sale event can leverage an AI recommendation engine on serverless functions, dynamically scaling up to support hundreds of thousands of users in parallel and scaling back down to zero once the demand subsides.—
Navneet Tyagi,
Forbes.com,
29 Aug. 2025
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Temperatures will cool back down to the low to mid 50s overnight.—
Anna Skinner,
MSNBC Newsweek,
29 Aug. 2025
Verb
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In both cases, Tibetans immediately backed off.—
Tenzin Dorjee,
Foreign Affairs,
1 Sep. 2025
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Discomfort is a sign to back off.—
Deirdre Bardolf,
FOXNews.com,
30 Aug. 2025
Verb
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On Thursday, there were 652 officers on the force, with nearly 100 cops out on some kind of administrative or medical leave.—
Shomik Mukherjee,
Mercury News,
8 Aug. 2025
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But with that brief wave of hope came new footage on Twitter every night of the NYPD acting like bad cops out of a Harvey Keitel flick: cops harassing peaceful crowds, cops kettling activists, cops literally driving a car into a crowd of protestors.—
Maris Kreizman,
Rolling Stone,
24 June 2025
Verb
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The Food and Drug Administration is recalling frozen shrimp sold at Walmart for possible radioactive chemical contamination.—
Cheryl V. Jackson,
IndyStar,
21 Aug. 2025
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The Food and Drug Administration is recalling frozen shrimp sold at Walmart, including stores in Ohio and Kentucky, for possible radioactive chemical contamination.—
Mary Walrath-Holdridge,
The Enquirer,
21 Aug. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Back out.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/back%20out. Accessed 7 Sep. 2025.
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