different between backslide vs backslider

English

Etymology

back +? slide

Verb

backslide (third-person singular simple present backslides, present participle backsliding, simple past backslid or backslided, past participle backslidden or backslid or backslided)

1. To regress; to slip backwards or revert to a previous, worse state.
   • 1893, George Eliot, George Eliot's Works - Volume 7 - Page 233

     Monna Brigida, who had backslided into false hair in Romola's absence, but now drew it off again and declared she would not mind being gray, if her dear child would stay with her.

   He felt better for a little while, before his condition started to backslide.

2. To shirk responsibility; to renege on one's obligations or commitments.

   Rich countries are backsliding on their commitment to agree to new WTO measures to help people in poor countries gain access to affordable medicines. — Oxfam press release, 24 June 2002

Derived terms

• backslider
• backsliding (adjective, noun)

Translations

Noun

backslide (plural backslides)

1. A backward regression; a reverting back to a worse state.
2. A dance move in which the feet are alternately slid back and the heels lifted, giving the illusion of walking forwards while actually moving backwards; later popularly called the moonwalk.

English

Etymology

From backslide +? -er.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?baksla?d?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?bæksla?d??/

Noun

backslider (plural backsliders)

1. A recidivist; one who backslides, especially in a religious sense; an apostate.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Judgement of Dungara’, Black and White, Folio Society 2004, vol. 1, p. 382:

     At night the Red Elephant Tusk boomed and groaned among the hills, and the faithful waked and said: ‘The God of Things as They Are matures revenge against the backsliders.’

   • 2009, Andrew F. Cooper, "Confronting Vulnerability through Resilient Diplomacy: Antigua and the WTO Internet Gambling Dispute with the United States" in Andrew F. Cooper and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 216,

     The choice of unilateralism by the US also exposed it to charges that it is a backslider on its WTO commitments.

   • 2012, Brian Bethune, "Two against one: About coupledom and the stigma of being single" in Maclean's, 20 June, 2012, [1]

     You say that you “lapse into coupledom” on occasion. Do you get grief from fellow militant singles for being a backslider?

   She married him thinking to change his ways, and for a while he got religion, but he was ever a backslider; she soon began finding bottles stashed about the house.

Anagrams

• blackrides