'backslide' is a correct and usable word in written English.
It is an intransitive verb meaning to relapse into a former less desirable state. Example sentence: After months of hard work to stop smoking, he backslid and picked up the habit again.
Also watching warily are devout Orthodox Christians around the world, who stand ready to denounce the patriarch if he appears to backslide on any doctrinal points.Perhaps the wariest observers are the Russian authorities, both lay and clerical.
The first is that the West does not backslide over paying for the Afghan army and police.
If APEC leaders merely mouth the same old vague promises to liberalise trade, to co-operate on fighting bird flu and so on, at least this makes it a sliver more awkward for them to backslide into protectionism and isolationism when they get home.
Recently, Japan's negotiators had seemed to backslide on lifting protections for agriculture and autos.Bolder still, on April 4th Mr Abe declared that his government would move to allow business to make more use of what he called "foreign human resources".
Mr Obama presumably intended his advance praise to make it easier for Mr Netanyahu to woo the waverers and harder for him to backslide into the arms of the hawks.
Combined with a modest increase in the average retirement age, this would be enough to hold the dependency ratio steady.Those are three excellent reasons not to backslide on reforms.
The basic problem has always been the overwhelming temptation for individuals to backslide on agreements: co-operation never seems worthwhile until it is too late.
Freedom House, an American-based lobby group, talks of "the most significant backslide in Hungary's democratic development since 1989".
They have thus distanced their personal styles from his. "Now everyone is starting to say; 'Thank God Giuliani was there: we need another like him.'"The worry is that the destruction of the World Trade Centre will come to symbolise the end of the good times under Mr Giuliani, and the beginning of a backslide.
But if you backslide too far, if you let the Devil come too close to you, it may be that you are too distant for even the Course to reach you.
It means putting a stop to the government's gradual backslide towards authoritarianism.
