back off vs backtrack

back off

verb
  • To move backwards away from something. 

  • To become less aggressive, particularly when one had appeared committed to act. 

  • To lower the setting of. 

  • You need to back off, or the situation could turn ugly. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see back, off. 

backtrack

verb
  • To retrace one's steps. 

  • To exercise a racehorse around the racetrack in the opposite direction to that in which races are run. 

  • To taxi down an active runway in the opposite direction to that being used for takeoff. 

  • To repeat or review work already done. 

noun
  • the act of backtracking 

How often have the words back off and backtrack occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )