to talk back
46
5.4
- phrasal verb
- /tɔk bæk/
- Informal
:
contestar (con insolencia)
- Don't talk back to your teacher; it's disrespectful.
- talk back to teachers
And I was like, oh, did he just talk back to Roddy?
- And I was like, oh, did he just talk back to Roddy?
- And everyone was like you talked back to like Denzel is one of the greatest talents.
Examples
-
You know you were out of line, talking back to a superior like that.
-
Don't talk back to me.
-
You need to stop talking back like that before they kill you.
-
Would you stop talking back to me?
-
I talked back to the principal.
-
Oh, how dare you talk back to a senior ranking officer.
-
You better not be talking back to your sensei.
-
Hey, don't talk back to your mother.
-
Don't talk back to me like that.
-
Hank, don't talk back to your elders.
Synonyms
28
8.3
To speak rudely and loudly to a person in charge
19
6.4
To reply quickly and sharply in a clever or angry way
18
4.8
To answer quickly in a sharp, angry way
16
8.4
Answer a person in charge in a rude, cheeky way
8
8.4
Talk back to someone in a rude way
1
6.9
To reply loudly and angrily to someone who insults you
1
8.9
Talk back rudely to someone in charge
Talk back to someone in a rude way
Antonyms
How Rude
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense of responding is directly derivable from combining 'talk' (speak) with the particle 'back' (indicating a reply), so a learner who knows both words will infer it means to reply. However, the negative/disobedient or rude nuance of the expression is not fully predictable from the constituents alone, making the idiom only partially transparent.
Etymology
Talk back comes from the simple image of speaking words back at someone in charge, with talk meaning to speak and back meaning back toward them. When you 'send words back' to a parent or teacher it looks 'rude' or 'disobedient', so the phrase means to reply to someone in authority in a rude way.