- located behind or at the back of something
- We were sitting in the back row.
- the back garden (= behind the house)
- a back room (= one at the back of a building)
- My phone's in my back pocket.
- back teeth
- the back page of a magazine
- We drove along miles of twisty back roads (= away from the main roads).
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- of or from a past time
- a back issue of the magazine
- owed for a time in the past
- back pay/taxes/rent
- (phonetics) (of a vowel) produced with the back of the tongue in a higher position than the front, for example /ɑː/ in English compare central, front
away from front
from past
owed
phonetics
Word OriginOld English bæc, of Germanic origin; related to Middle Dutch and Old Norse bak. The adverb use dates from late Middle English and is a shortening of aback.
Idioms
See back in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee back in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishon the back burner
- (informal) (of an idea, a plan, etc.) left for the present time, to be done or considered later see also back-burner compare on the front burner
(put/catch somebody) on the back foot
- (to put somebody) at a disadvantage or in difficulty
- Advances in drone technology have caught lawmakers on the back foot.
- The side that’s on the back foot, struggling to defend, will usually give away more penalties.
- We'd like to put the fossil fuel industry on the back foot.
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back