To backtrack means to reverse your direction and return along the path you came from. When hikers realize they've taken a wrong turn on a trail, they backtrack to find where they went off course. A detective might backtrack through a suspect's movements to figure out what really happened.

The word also describes changing your position or taking back something you said. When a student claims they finished all their homework but later backtracks and admits they still have math problems left, they're reversing their earlier statement. Politicians sometimes backtrack on promises when they realize those commitments are harder to keep than expected.

You can think of backtracking as retracing your steps, whether those steps are physical footprints on a path or the words you spoke in a conversation. Sometimes backtracking means admitting a mistake, which takes courage. Other times it simply means recognizing you need to return to an earlier point to find the right way forward. A chess player might backtrack in their strategy, and a writer might backtrack to an earlier draft that worked better.