backbite

Characters backbite, bellyache, reluctantly pitch in and commit mundane acts of heroism in a largely believable manner, and there’s blessedly little inspirational speechmaking.

From New York Times ● Sep. 11, 2022

Diana could spin one delicious backbite like that into a column.

From Time Magazine Archive

The practice of letters is miserably harassing to the mind; and after an hour or two's work, all the more human portion of the author is extinct; he will bully, backbite, and speak daggers.

From Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers by Robert Louis Stevenson

You would not like your neighbor to backbite you, and you have no right to do to him what you would not wish him to do to you.

From Baltimore Catechism, No. 4 An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine by Thomas L. Kinkead

Wherefore, properly speaking, to backbite is to speak ill of an absent person in order to blacken his good name.

From Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province by Saint Aquinas Thomas

One who backbites; a secret calumniator or detractor.

From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster

Here's an unthankful spiteful wretch! the good gentleman vouchsafed to make him his companion, because my husband put him into a few rags, and now see how the unrude rascal backbites him!

From Every Man out of His Humour by Ben Jonson

He was the hero of London society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship.

From The Wits and Beaux of Society Volume 2 by Philip Wharton

It was only such as had reason to dread the secret communication between closet and housetop that feared her tongue; if she spoke loud, she never spoke false, or backbit in the dark.

From Malcolm by George MacDonald

Now we can't help being backbitten or talked about, but we can help doing it to others: the way, child, is to keep to ourselves and to see no one.

From Daisy Burns (Volume 2) by Julia Kavanagh

I overheard the aide-de-camp say; "he is a backbiting sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he has you!"

From The Cavalier by George Washington Cable

I came here to try and do you a good turn, not to hear John Huish backbitten.

From A Double Knot by George Manville Fenn

I have no friend at Rome; I have laboured in England, to be misrepresented, backbitten and scorned.

From Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

No worse than they are backbitten, sir; for they have     marvellous foul linen.

From The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

A man masters his emotions, remains calm under pressure, refuses to engage in gossip or backbiting and accepts his imperfections while continually striving to become the best version of himself.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026

That kind of provocative behavior will lead to years, even a lifetime, of one-upmanship, backbiting and behind-the-scenes maneuvers.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 3, 2025

Mark and Dahlia discuss this news, and also how lower court judges are calling out SCOTUS’ unreasoned, incoherent opinions and how some of the Justices are trying to control, alt, delete all the backbiting.

From Slate ● Sep. 6, 2025

It is too much to blame a single individual, as despicable as Carlson may be, for leading a whole country into a slough of anger, backbiting, recrimination and mistrust.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2023

His nominal goal was to end backbiting about the bomb program from Roosevelt’s director of war mobilization, James F. Byrnes, a former senator and Supreme Court justice.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik