Definition of "backbite" []

• To speak spitefully or slanderously about (another). (verb-transitive)
• To speak spitefully or slanderously about a person. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Wherefore, properly speaking, to backbite is to speak ill of an absent person in order to blacken his good name."
• "Now who is that so base and ungrateful as to rise from a table where such delicious victuals are served and "backbite" the neighbor who prepares it?"
• "It has just about started realizing, after much needless suffering of its own from blowback and backbite, that surviving the whirlwind of globalization takes smarts rather than brute force."