Underdog Stories / Everyday expressions

What Does “On the Back Burner” Mean?

What does on the back burner mean? It means giving something less attention for now, not giving it up. A stove and a podcast debate explain the difference.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 16, 2026

Share on X

Twenty has two pots in mind. One burner is set to eight, the other to two. The second pot is easy to miss when the first needs watching, yet it has not left the stove.

What does on the back burner mean? It means a task, plan, or concern will get less attention now and may be dealt with later. You can postpone it without giving it up. That distinction matters to Twenty and Mario Hines in the Appraise The Phrase episode “On The Back Burner”: both hear a difference between doing something later and deciding it has no value.

What does on the back burner mean as an idiom?

An idiom is a phrase whose meaning goes beyond its literal words. Nobody has to cook dinner when a manager says a project is on the back burner. The project is waiting while other work gets attention. Cambridge gives two useful ways to read it: something may be set aside for now, and it may still be considered in the future.

The picture helps. A pot near the back of a stove can stay warm or simmer while the cook works on a pot at the front. A U.S. Department of State guide to American idioms uses that contrast to explain the phrase. The front burners get the cook’s immediate attention; the back burners can hold food that needs less of it.

Twenty gets there before the definitions arrive. He tells Mario that a back burner is harder to reach, so he thinks of it as something other than the first choice. Still, he says, it can “get the job done.” Mario says he hears it as a second option too. He also admits he rarely says it aloud. Put a person back there, he says, and it starts to sound rude.

What does put on the back burner mean?

To put something on the back burner is to decide to deal with it later. For now, it waits. That can free up time for work that needs doing now. Say a team plans a new website, then finds a fault in its current one. It can put the redesign on the back burner while it fixes the fault, leaving the project in the plan even if nobody opens its files today.

That is close to the State Department guide’s definition: spending less energy on an activity or delaying action on it. The guide compares the phrase with on hold and on ice. Those expressions also make room for a return, though back burner gives the waiting task a warmer spot.

Pay attention to the time words. “We’ve put it on the back burner until Friday” gives you a next step. “We’ve put it on the back burner” leaves the timing open, and that’s where a polite delay can start to sound like an excuse.

Mario wants to know if the phrase can ever sound positive to the person hearing it. Twenty offers the stove again. One job may be on high heat and another on low, he says, yet both are being tended. Then he catches how faint the comfort is: the second job could have been left off the stove entirely. A back burner is better than that, though you may still want to ask when your turn comes.

What does keep on the back burner mean?

Keep adds time. If you keep a plan on the back burner, you continue to leave it out of the main work while holding onto it. You might keep a move in mind while you finish a lease. You might keep a course of study in mind while you save for the fees. The phrase allows for a return; it does not promise a date.

Left on the back burner has a different edge. Left points to the wait, and sometimes to how much longer it lasted than the speaker wanted. “Our plans were left on the back burner all year” may sound irritated. The idiom still means delayed attention. The surrounding words tell you how the speaker feels.

Twenty puts the order plainly in the episode. When he finishes with the front burners, he says, he can move the other pot forward. He also allows that some things may not need the front burner yet. Mario brings up a fair objection: when he makes dinner, he sometimes needs all four burners at once. Real cooks do not run their kitchens by idiom rules.

“Yours might be on the 2, but it's on the stove and it's slowly cooking.”
— Twenty, on Appraise The Phrase

That small objection is worth keeping. The phrase describes how people sort their attention, not a law of stove design. A task might need slow, steady work. Another might need a quick decision. Calling one “back burner” tells you which gets attention first; it tells you little about how hard either one is.

Where did on the back burner come from?

The phrase borrows its image from cooking, and the stove came long before the idiom. A Smithsonian Libraries and Archives account of an 1868 trade catalog shows American stoves made to burn wood or coal. They were built for cooking before the gas range became the familiar kitchen appliance. Later gas stoves gave cooks a row of burners they could turn up or down, making the front-and-back picture easy to recognize.

Dictionary.com records the figurative back burner in the 1945–50 period. Its account points to the cooking habit of placing pots that need less immediate attention toward the rear of the stove. That date marks recorded use, not the moment one known cook first said it. Nobody has a signed note from that cook.

Mario walks through older stove design and the later spread of gas ranges in the episode. His larger point holds up: a kitchen object has to be familiar enough for listeners to get the comparison. His account also gets tangled when he tries to pin down whether front burner or back burner came first. The evidence here supports the cooking image and a mid-20th-century recorded date for back burner. It does not settle every claim he and Twenty consider about which version led the way.

Twenty spots the missing piece. He asks when someone actually coined the phrase. Mario cannot give him a person’s name. They joke that if Shakespeare, whom Twenty calls “Billy Shake,” did not approve it, perhaps it hardly counts as a phrase. That is a tough rule for kitchen talk. Someone almost certainly said it before a dictionary caught it; we just do not know who.

Does on the back burner mean unimportant?

It can suggest that something is less urgent. It can also sound as though the speaker values it less. Cambridge says the idiom often applies when something is not urgent or important, while its American English entry leaves room for a task that simply is not being done now. Those are close meanings with a big difference when the delayed plan belongs to you.

Mario and Twenty spend much of the episode on that difference. Mario says he is comfortable choosing one option over another without calling the second one unimportant. Twenty agrees. He would rather talk about priority than tell someone their work lacks importance. Mario worries that the word important carries an extra judgment the speaker may not intend.

Consider two tasks on a Monday. A broken door lock needs fixing today. A family photo book can wait until the weekend. Putting the book on the back burner says something about when you will work on it. It need not say anything about how much the people in those photos matter.

Still, Mario is right to be wary. Context can make the gentler meaning hard to hear. If you keep delaying the same request and never name a time to return to it, the person who made it may stop believing it has a place on the stove. Priority is something you show as well as say.

What does putting someone on the back burner mean?

With a person, the phrase gets sharper. “You put me on the back burner” usually means “You give me less of your time and attention while something or someone else comes first.” It may describe a brief, honest strain on a relationship. It may also be a complaint about a pattern that has gone on too long. The idiom itself does not tell you which. Its basic meaning is delayed or reduced attention; the relationship gives that delay its weight.

Mario hears that risk as soon as Twenty applies the stove image to choices. Saying it about a project feels ordinary to him. Saying it to a person feels disrespectful. Twenty tries to find the hopeful reading: the pot is still on the stove, even at a lower setting. Then he hears how “be grateful” might land with someone who has been waiting.

A clearer sentence may do more good. “I can’t meet this week; can we talk Saturday?” gives the other person something they can count on. “I’m keeping you on the back burner” makes them sound like a pot you have nearly forgotten to stir. Mario’s worry makes sense. Nobody wants to ask how long they have been simmering.