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rollback

noun, verb

rollback is a noun meaning “A return to a prior state by undoing some operation, especially of policy or price changes” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-O-L-L-B-A-C-K and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rollback is rollbacks.

What does rollback mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A return to a prior state by undoing some operation, especially of policy or price changes.

  2. 2

    A withdrawal of military forces.

  3. 3

    An operation which returns a database, or group of records in a database, to a previous state (normally to the previous commit point).

    Near-synonyms: reversion, revert (sometimes synonymous)

  4. 4

    The situation where a rollercoaster fails to reach the top of a hill and instead rolls backward.

  5. 5

    informalA form of flatbed truck adapted or designed specifically to carry other vehicles, for use in recovery (wrecking, salvage) or for transporting.

    Near-synonym: tow truck (loosely often synonymous)

  6. 6

    The strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime, or by totally annihilating an enemy's armed forces and occupying the country, as was done in World War II to Italy, Germany, and Japan.

  7. 7

    An uncommanded reduction in the thrust of a jet engine.

verb

  1. 1

    To return to the previous state.

    The server is unstable, we need to rollback the changes.

  2. 2

    To reduce thrust without having been commanded to do so.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce rollback?

  • US

Rollback has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-rollback.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rollback

  • rollbacks plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • rollbacking participle, present
  • rollbacked participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is rollback?

Rollback appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 41,660th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with rollback

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

roll back vs rollback0 B

Also written: roll back (one word or two).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Rollback in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
GermanRollback (return to a prior state), Entzug (withdrawal of military forces)
Frenchretrait (withdrawal of military forces), rollback ((computing) operation to return the database to…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does rollback come from?

The noun is a deverbal from roll back. The verb is a back-formation from the noun despite being redundant to roll back.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).