bounce back

present singular third person bounces back · participle present bouncing back · participle past bounced back · past bounced back

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo recover from a negative situation without seemingly any damage.

   We thought he'd die from the crash, but he bounced back to normal after 10 days in hospital.

   2 more examples

   Chelsea bounced back from the disappointment of losing at Wolves in midweek to end City's 21-game unbeaten league run stretching back to April, and a sequence of 14 unbeaten games away from home.

   2018 December 8, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 2 - 0 Manchester City”, in BBC Sport

   The current Coronavirus pandemic has obviously had an effect on the line's traffic, but I have little doubt that the numbers will bounce back sooner or later because the ELL has proved too vital a link for both business and leisure travel.

   2020 May 20, Paul Bigland, “East London Line's renaissance”, in Rail, page 49

2. InternetintransitiveOf an email message, to be returned to the sender because it is undeliverable.
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bounce, back.

plural bounce backs

1. alternativeAlternative form of bounceback.

   After an initial bounce back, the post-Covid Chinese economy has turned sluggish. Its property market - once a key driver of growth - is now mired in a credit crisis, exacerbating a domestic "debt bomb" that has ballooned from years of borrowing by local government and state-owned enterprises.

   2023 November 15, Tessa Wong, “Xi Jinping arrives in US as his Chinese Dream sputters”, in BBC