backstab
Americanverb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of backstab
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"You don't know who to trust, and when you do trust someone they backstab you," he says.
From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2022
A backstab in Demon’s Souls sounds sharp and gives me a small shiver of excitement up my spine each time.
From The Verge ● Feb. 18, 2022
It was right place, right time or they had the guts enough to backstab their friends.
From Slate ● Dec. 8, 2021
"I can't backstab the people who support me."
From Salon ● Sep. 18, 2021
“I do. But what does getting people to backstab each other have to do with making a good movie?”
From "From Twinkle, with Love" by Sandhya Menon
He lied and backstabbed and took advantage of loopholes, and he argued — with a telegenic brashness — that this made him smart.
From New York Times ● Sep. 6, 2019
Back in high school, before being mellowed by parenthood and the Golden State, Amanda backstabbed and undermined and boyfriend-stole.
From Slate ● Mar. 2, 2012
In nonviolent settings, it leads to mean-girl-style ostracism or political backstabbing around the corporate watercooler.
From Slate ● Mar. 16, 2026
She won her first film role in 1963’s “13 Frightened Girls” as a diplomat’s daughter but found greater renown as a backstabbing schemer on the ABC soap “Peyton Place” a few years later.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 16, 2026
“The Last Kings” is rife with a different sort of bad behavior: the sort of backstabbing that only friends do.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
George Cukor’s black-and-white vision traipses its heroines through dress fittings, manicures and facials, day drinking and backstabbing all the way, save for an interruption by a Technicolor fashion show.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2025
I hadn’t recognized him in his new helmet, but it was my old backstabbing buddy Ethan Nakamura.
From "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
