claw back
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See also: clawback
English[edit]
Verb[edit]
claw back (third-person singular simple present claws back, present participle clawing back, simple past and past participle clawed back)
- (transitive) To recover or retake, with great effort, something that was lost, often by a government or official agency.
- I was initially refused a refund, but eventually managed to claw back part of the money.
- 2019 June 10, Heather Stewart, “Gove reboots Tory leadership bid with attack on Johnson”, in The Guardian[1]:
- Michael Gove has tried to claw his way back into the race to be Britain’s next prime minister with a pledge to govern for “overlooked families and undervalued communities” – and a series of personal attacks on frontrunner Boris Johnson.