fall behind

Questions about fall behind

What does fall behind mean?

fall behind means "retreat". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for fall behind?

Close synonyms include fall back, drop off, recede, lag, dawdle. 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 fall behind a common word?

fall behind is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.