Etymology

backbite

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Today it means: To make spiteful slanderous or defamatory statements about someone. Full definition →

Middle English bakbiten
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited frombakbiten
  2. English todaybackbite

From Middle English bakbiten, bacbiten, equivalent to back- + bite. Cognate with Icelandic bakbíta (“to backbite, vilify”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.