back off

Questions about back off

What does back off mean?

back off means "move backwards from a certain position". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for back off?

Close synonyms include back up, back down, chicken out, pull out, back down. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is back off a common word?

back off is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.