A betrayal; an act of treachery. It felt like a stab in the back to hear that Paul was going out with my ex-girlfriend.The campaign coordinator's mid-race shift of allegiance will be quite a stab in the back for the incumbent president.My so-called friends started that awful rumor about me? Wow, talk about a stab in the back.
1.Lit. to thrust a knife into someone's back. Max planned to stab his hostage in the back if he screamed. The murderer stabbed his victim in the back and fled.
2.Fig. to betray someone. I wish you would not gossip about me. There is no need to stab me in the back.
A betrayal of trust, an act of treachery, as in Voting against our bill at the last minute was a real stab in the back. It is also put as stab someone in the back, meaning "betray someone." For example, Don't trust George; he's been known to stab his friends in the back. Both the noun and verb forms of this idiom, alluding to a physical attack when one's back is turned, date from the early 1900s.
A treacherous attack. Surprisingly, this term has been used figuratively only since the early twentieth century; literally it must be as old as the word “stab” (fourteenth century). Rudyard Kipling used it in Limits and Renewals (1932): “He . . . stabs me in the back with his crazy schemes for betterment.”
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