backbiter

“It’s my fault, Mama. I did a really mean thing to Emily, and I’m a backbiter, and I’m going to be punished...”

Cruz is hardly the first candidate to pitch himself as Washington’s only honest lawmaker, but he appears exceptionally willing to brand his party as a pack of spineless backbiters.

She better not hear none of them old backbiters talking about her husband!

The first season introduced us to Ned Stark, a protagonist too rigidly moral to keep his head among the backbiters of King’s Landing.

Happily for him, to use Howes’ words, “He was careless of the scoffers, backbiters, and detractors.”