different between backslides vs backslider

English

Verb

backslides

1. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of backslide

Noun

backslides

1. plural of backslide

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