hang back

present singular third person hangs back · participle present hanging back · participle past hung back · past hung back

1. informalTo wait; to falter; to avoid proceeding through reluctance.

   From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone?

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 182

   2 more examples

   '[…] Perhaps just at present he may be undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give, will fix him, in spite of himself […]'

   1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XI, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume II, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC

   Ayala’s mix-up with Dean Whitehead left Cameron Jerome advancing from the flank, probably expecting at least one opponent would come across to block off the shot. It never happened. The next defender, Ben Gibson, hung back, mistakenly thinking Jerome would look for a team-mate, and the goalkeeper, Dimitrios Konstantopoulos, also seemed to be caught in two minds.

   2015 May 25, Daniel Taylor, “Norwich reach Premier League after early blitz sees off Middlesbrough”, in The Guardian (London)