Fightback

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An act of resisting or retaliating after being attacked or defeated, aiming to regain control or strength
2. The effort to oppose or respond forcefully following an initial loss or assault, to recover or defend oneself
3. A counteraction taken to defend or recover position after suffering an attack or setback

Etymology: "Fightback" is a compound of "fight" and "back," and the source describes it as a deverbal formed from the phrasal verb "fight back." That means the noun was derived from the verb phrase rather than the two words being joined first as a noun. "Fight back" itself combines the verb "fight" with the adverb "back," in the sense of returning force against an assailant, and the adverb carries the idea of reversing direction, as in "strike back" or "hit back." The noun grew out of that phrasal verb by a process linguists call back-formation or conversion, in which a verb phrase is reshaped into a noun denoting the action it names. The result describes the act of striking back in return, and it is now most often used for a campaign or response that recovers ground after a loss, as in a sports team's comeback or a company's effort to regain market share.

Synonyms: retaliation, rebuttal, counterattack, response, reversal

Antonyms: surrender, submission, capitulation, yielding, retreat