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backward

[bak-werd]

Example Sentences Origin

adverb Also, back·wards.

toward the back or rear.

with the back foremost.

in the reverse of the usual or right way: counting backward from 100.

toward the past: to look backward over one's earlier mistakes.

toward a less advanced state; retrogressively: Since the overthrow of the president the country has moved steadily backward.

adjective

directed toward the back or past.

reversed; returning: a backward movement; a backward journey.

behind in time or progress; late; slow: a backward learner; a backward country.

bashful or hesitant; shy: a backward lover.

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Backward is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Idiom

10.

backward and forward, thoroughly: He knew his lesson backward and forward. Also, backwards and forwards.

Origin:
1250–1300; Middle English bakwarde. See back¹, -ward

Related forms

back·ward·ly, adverb

back·ward·ness, noun

un·back·ward, adjective

Synonyms
8. tardy; retarded, underdeveloped. 9. disinclined; timid, retiring.

Antonyms
1. forward.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source

Link To backward

Example Sentences

Walk around while seeing the world upside down and backward.

And it's not that colleges aren't bending over backward to admit the men they find.

Two decades later, the government-bond market is big but backward.

EXPAND

Walk around while seeing the world upside down and backward.

And it's not that colleges aren't bending over backward to admit the men they find.

Two decades later, the government-bond market is big but backward.

Let's start from relatively recent history and move backward in time.

Hence the ice snaps foward much more than the rock snaps backward.

His conviction represented a huge backward step for science, as well as a harrowing ordeal for him and his estranged family.

Sometimes you have to go backward before you can clearly see how to move forward.

If the crushing blow approaches head-on, the fly shifts its middle legs forward so it can push backward.

Evolutionary biologists have long wondered if history can run backward.

Here was proof that the civil-rights movement had not gone backward.

My sense is that backward induction takes us to a world in which the adminstration gets the cuts it wants and no more.

Penguins fall backward when they look up at airplanes.

Factually, one can slow down time, but the speculation about going backward in time is premature.

Researchers can then work backward to pinpoint the time and place of the lightning.

For the dark prince of hacker fiction, looking backward is another way of seeing the future.

Some of the group's members worried that the move was a great leap backward.

It can help bring jobs to people in backward areas, when people in those areas will not go to the jobs.

The system resets every leap year, slipping a little bit backward until corrected by a century where no leap year is celebrated.

Spookiest of all were the clues embedded in songs played backward.

New changes may occur if the conditions were changed, but you can not actually go backward.

If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed.

It often moves in more than one direction at a time and sometimes even moves backward.

The ball is thrown into the scrum and the players try to gain possession of it by kicking it backward toward their own side.

The rear half of the skull consisted of a bony crest that grew straight backward.

Oakland is trying, but seems to take one step forward and two steps backward when it comes to improvement.

The standard also promises easy backward compatibility, which means new devices will work smoothly with older products.

Don't grab the arms of the chair or slide backward in it.

They lower their necks and tilt their heads so that their bills hang upside-down and face backward in the water.

Perceiving a threat coming from behind, the fly moves its middle legs backward in preparation to launch forward.

As bob1 notes, the new editor seems to be a step backward.

If the car backfired, the engine could slip into reverse, forcing the crank backward sharply.

Anniversaries need to be forward as well as backward looking.

Looking backward is not to retreat into the past but to prepare for the future.

It has been a matter of two steps forward, one and three-quarters steps backward.

If anything, juries tend to bend over backward for defendants in high-profile cases.

State education fails bright pupils as well as backward ones.

Indeed, it is hard to understand, looking backward over.

It has been revealed as plagued by backward technology, politically-biased oversight and local.

They then close, keeping blood from flowing backward.

They then ran backward and forward along the paper, trying to escape.

The as-yet-unobserved particles travel backward in time, some physicists speculate.

Don't believe your own memory, it only works backward.

Straighten left leg, then pull it backward from the hip.

Maybe it's a fond backward glance as the end of the century approaches.

She is leaning perilously backward and turning her head away.

Its nostrils were enlarged and drawn backward into the skull.

During this testing, each player performed tasks such as counting backward and placing objects in order.

In the more backward parts of the country, personality and patronage can still trump ideology and organisation.

They barrel roll when they hit a rich patch, somersaulting backward to stay in the hot spot.

Fives are not equal and every human must look backward over earlier mistakes.

The light in the corkscrew can then be tilted at an angle that kicks the spheres backward even as the beam itself moves forward.

York's paintings evoke a world in which time and art seem to stand still or even move backward through history.

In reality, the terms of any compact between the state and the underworld are perpetually shifting backward and forward.

He used to find himself leaning backward because his pack was too heavy and his straps were too loose.

Adults are generally in the business of applying correlations, and when needed, working backward from them.

Others warn that bond prices could roll backward if the economy stumbles.

No test can anticipate where that will lead, no test looking backward can capture the needs of the.

Why are service industries so backward and what might be done to improve.

Narrating backward increases cognitive load because it runs counter to the natural forward sequencing of events.

What he likely wasn't looking forward to was time-traveling backward into a workplace riddled with obsolete technology.

Some nation or tribe which is at once backward and remote may make a temporary stand against it.

It gives disproportionate clout to small, backward provinces.

He wears his baseball cap backward and speaks in a piping, unbroken voice.

They need to consider this as something synthetic and backward engineering will tell them the rest of the story.

The country is dirt-poor and technologically backward.

He was thrown over backward on his head, and several men fell on him.

It is widely accepted that all-inclusive hotels do not foster important backward linkages to the rest of the local.

He recited an incantation directed to a ganjin, a gremlin with backward feet who lives in the mountain.

It could make light waves appear to flow backward and behave in many other counterintuitive ways.

But start going backward along the gaming timeline and the information starts to thin.

Florists say that although the season was backward at the start, there never has been a greater.

Though the north's armed forces are huge, swallowing up a third of the national budget, they are also backward.

The suggestion that this technology is better suited to urban areas seems backward to me.

And the multiplayer mode bends over backward to accommodate all types of players.

Airplane security seems to forever be looking backward.

We're still heading straight up, but the ship is flying backward.

If the round tumbles and is facing sideways or backward it will have little effect on any sort of armor.

Air punches me in the face, and the recoil shoves me backward.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

backward (ˈbækwəd)

—*adj*
1.	(usually prenominal) directed towards the rear: a backward glance
2.	retarded in physical, material, or intellectual development: backward countries; a backward child
3.	a. of or relating to the past; conservative or reactionary
	b. (in combination): backward-looking
4.	reluctant or bashful: a backward lover
5.	chess (of a pawn) behind neighbouring pawns and unable to be supported by them

—*adv*
6.	a variant of backwards

'backwardly

—*adv*

'backwardness

—n

backwards or backward (ˈbækwədz)

—*adv*
1.	towards the rear
2.	with the back foremost
3.	in the reverse of usual order or direction
4.	to or towards the past
5.	into a worse state: the patient was slipping backwards
6.	towards the point of origin
7.	informal bend over backwards, lean over backwards, fall over backwards to make a special effort, esp in order to please
8.	informal know backwards to understand completely

backward or backward

—*adv*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

backward

c.1300, from abakward, from O.E. on bæc + -weard adj./adv. suffix. Backwards, with adverbial genitive, is from 1510s. Meaning "behindhand with regard to progress" is first attested 1690s. To ring bells backward (from lowest to highest), c.1500, was a signal of alarm for fire or invasion, or to

EXPAND

express dismay.

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

backward

In addition to the idiom beginning with backward, also see bend over backward; fall over (backwards); know like a book (backwards and forwards).

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