[General] He backed on his promise and decided to go to a French club.

[Silverobama]

My friend Yves promised to join me for dinner tomorrow but he later told me that he wanted to go to a French club. I was a bit unhappy. Today I asked another friend to have dinner with me tomorrow and he said "Shouldn't you be with Yves?" and I said "He backed on his promise and decided to go to a French club".

Is my italic sentence natural?

 

[Rover_KE]

No.

He went back on his promise ...
He reneged on his promise ...
He broke his promise ...

 

[emsr2d2]

I don't find "Shouldn't you be with Yves?" natural there. That would work if you were meant to be with Yves at the time of speaking. Because you're referring to the future, use something like "I thought you were going out with Yves tomorrow evening?"

 

[tedmc]

What about "backed out on his promise"?

 

[Rover_KE]

What about "backed out on his promise"?

:cross:

 

[tedmc]

:cross:

What about "backed out (of the dinner) and decided to go to a French club"?

The definition in the dictionary seems to fit.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/amp/english/back-out

 

[jutfrank]

What about "backed out on his promise"?

I don't like the use of on there. You normally have to back out of something.

 

[tedmc]

I don't like the use of on there. You normally have to back out of something.

So is it okay with the change of preposition for the context?

 

[jutfrank]

So is it okay with the change of preposition for the context?

It's not wrong but it isn't a particularly strong collocation. I think that's largely due to the strength of other collocations (see post #2).

 

[tedmc]

It's not wrong but it isn't a particularly strong collocation. I think that's largely due to the strength of other collocations (see post #2).

Okay, back out works with other things but not promises.

I suggested that to see if the original post using those words could be rectified without changing them entirely.