callback

Or call-back

[kawl-bak]

noun

1. an act of calling back.

2. a summoning of workers back to work after a layoff.

3. a summoning of an employee back to work after working hours, as for emergency business.

4. a request to a performer who has auditioned for a role, booking, or the like to return for another audition.

5. recall.

6. a return telephone call.

7. an allusion to a joke made earlier in the same comedy act or show.

   The kitten yelling “Quiet!” at the end was a callback to earlier in the episode when the two normally silent brothers shouted it.

adjective

1. of or relating to a return telephone call.

   Please leave a callback number.

verb phrase

1. to telephone (a person) who has called earlier.

   Our staff will call you back within 24 hours.

2. to summon or bring back; recall.

   He called back the messenger.

   The actor was called back for a second audition.

3. to revoke; retract.

   to call back an accusation.

Word History and Origins

Origin of callback¹

First recorded in 1925–30; noun use of verb phrase call back

Example Sentences

For a later scene when Man-soo is strolling, businesslike, toward his first attempted murder, Lee improvised a spastic callback to the earlier snake moment.

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“Losing,” star pitcher and World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto added, in English, in a callback to one of his memorable quotes from this past October, “isn’t an option.”

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But it did feel like a callback to an incandescent era — a young band enjoying its spoils at L.A.’s most infamous party palace.

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“If you send an email and wait for a callback, you’re not going to get one,” he said.

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I think part of it was a callback to “The French Connection.”

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