as in holds back
Related Words
Relevance
Dissimilar Words
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for sets back
Verb
-
Meyer's vivid descriptions paint a harrowing picture that holds up just as well as the film version's finale scenes.—
USA Today,
USA Today,
10 Oct. 2025 -
New to the service this month is the excellent 1983 adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, a masterpiece of all-ages horror that still holds up today.—
PC Magazine,
PC Magazine,
3 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
These early shifts—less COVID vaccination; fewer options for flu, MMR, and chickenpox vaccines; and, perhaps soon, delays to the hepatitis-B schedule—may seem benign enough.—
Katherine J. Wu,
The Atlantic,
18 Sep. 2025
-
Too much light in the evening — that extra hour from daylight saving time — delays that surge and the cycle gets out of sync.—
Jeremy Tanner,
The Hill,
17 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
Refrigerating bananas slows ripening and reduces sugar spikes.—
Christopher Bergland,
Verywell Health,
14 Oct. 2025
-
Because of this, local officials are encouraging drivers to drive more slowly and with much more caution through mating season, which typically slows down towards the end of November into December.—
Moná Thomas,
PEOPLE,
14 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
Splatter paints, stems for flowers, spitball fights!—
Lauren Silbert,
PEOPLE,
8 Oct. 2025
-
Clip stems at different heights to show off each flower’s form, and fill in with foliage.—
Miranda Crowell,
Better Homes & Gardens,
7 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
Treatment requires intravenous administration of ethanol or fomepizole, a specific antidote that blocks methanol’s toxic conversion.—
Alessandra Freitas,
CNN Money,
12 Oct. 2025
-
The deals include truly innovative items, such as the Waoaw Blackout Sleep Mask, which blocks out 100 percent of light, and the Allclair Nausea Relief Inhaler, which offers a new solution to motion sickness.—
Genevieve Cepeda,
Travel + Leisure,
8 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
Weiland has affection for him yet keeps him strictly in the friend zone.—
David Fear,
Rolling Stone,
15 Oct. 2025
-
This morning, sentimentality keeps you from seeing a situation clearly.—
USA TODAY,
USA Today,
15 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
The Pinault family owns 42 percent of shares in Kering and detains 59 percent of voting rights.—
Joelle Diderich,
Footwear News,
9 Sep. 2025
-
The play is set in the real-life town of Lumpkin, whose economy has become reliant on a private prison that detains immigrants.—
Martha Ross,
Mercury News,
7 Aug. 2025
Verb
-
In addition to delivering high-quality search results, this method hinders search-engine cheating; artificially boosting your web page by putting up a thousand pages linking to it won’t accomplish much if those pages have low status.—
Jack Murtagh,
Scientific American,
11 Oct. 2025
-
This hinders the seamless experience essential for mass EV adoption.—
Atharva Gosavi,
Interesting Engineering,
10 Oct. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Cite this Entry
“Sets back.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sets%20back. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share