to call back
457
2.8
- phrasal verb
- /kɔl bæk/
:
devolver la llamada
- I'll call you back with the details.
- I will call you back
And one of them calls me back, and he has some questions.
- And one of them calls me back, and he has some questions.
- Well, I meant to call you back last night when you called.
- All right, Maria, I got to call you back when we're done filming.
- They're actually calling people back and willing to help walk you through this.
- They got naked, he just caught didn't call her back done over what happened.
- I called her back and she's picked up the phone.
Examples
-
Well, I meant to call you back last night when you called.
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I'm not available right now, but leave a message, and I will call you right back.
-
But it's still no excuse not to call you back.
-
Anyway, just call me back.
-
I will call you back later, Mama.
-
I'm getting a bit worried so please call me back, OK?
-
To my astonishment, Ashley called back and said the president would love to see me.
Academic text (2011) -
Rabbi Sabo was busy, but he called back a few days later.
Fiction book (1992) -
Lou Schwartz called me back and gave me a lot of figures.
-
Please call back later when you're free to talk.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The computing sense keeps a visible link to the constituents: 'call' (invoke) and 'back' (return/again), so a learner could infer a notion of invoking something again or in response. However, the technical meaning — executing a previously supplied function in response to an event — is a specialized, domain-specific extension that a B1 learner who only knows the literal words is unlikely to predict fully.
Etymology
Call back comes from the plain idea of phoning someone again: you 'call' them and then call them back, where back means 'again'. So it means 'to return a telephone call'.