Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(W.I., Jam.) far away, deep in the countryside, in the ‘back of beyond’.

1996

Allsopp Dict. Carib. Eng. Usage.

1. (US, also back of the yards) a poor area of the city.

1932

P.G. Cressey Taxi-Dance Hall 96: The Polish girl from ‘back of the yards’.

2. (W.I., also back-o-wall) the Caribbean.

1968		L. Barrett Rastafarians (1977) 88: The dispossessed of the city always found a place where they could feel at home. The area was then known as ‘Back-O-Wall’ or ‘Shanty-Town’. [Ibid.] 92: Reported 1958 in local newspaper ‘Members of the Rastafari Cult [...] from all over the island have assembled at Back-O-Wall headquarters’.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 172: Back-ah-yard The Caribbean generally; an expression, roughly translated as ‘back home’, used by homesick West Indians.
2001		(con. 1981) A. Wheatle East of Acre Lane 223: I’ll ’ave to forward back-a-yard an’ visit me mudder.

(orig. US black teen) a long time ago, ‘once upon a time’.

1985		LL Cool J ‘Dear Yvette’ 🎵 I heard she did it on a motorcycle back in the days.
1991		Spin VII:4 40/3: Maybe subconsciously I'm tapping into something [i.e. musical inspiration] from back in the day.
1993		Snoop Doggy Dogg ‘For All My Niggaz & Bitches’ 🎵 Daz is that nigga from back in the day.
1998		Source Oct. 35: I’m just reminiscin’ about what happened back in the days.
2004		N. Kelley ‘The Code’ in Brooklyn Noir 173: A real nigga’s life, not back in the day, but here in the moment.
2006		G. Malkani Londonstani (2007) 115: Mr Ashwood’d been so safe to me back in the day.
2008		Simon & Burns ‘–30–’ Wire ser. 5 ep. 10 [TV script] You gonna stand there cryin’ that back in the day shit. They ain’t no back in the day, nigger, they ain’t no nostalgia to this shit here. There’s just the street, and the game and what happened here today.
2011		G. Knight Hood Rat 155: We had a code back in the day [...] Never get little kids involved.
2020		D. Whish-Wilson Shore Leave 69: His father had worked as a speed cook back in the day.

(US) menstruating.

1954		AS XXIX:4 298: [Vernacular of menstruation] Back in the saddle [in use by men and women].
1978		MJLF 4.1.38: They also used terms suggestive of feminine hygiene products . . . ‘back in the saddle again’ (complete with melody) [DARE].

(US) unsophisticated, gauche.

1965

C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 279: The way I felt about it, I should have been their parents, because I had been out there in the streets, and I wasn’t as far back in the woods as they were.

anywhere considered by the speaker as inaccessible, outside the purlieus of acceptable life.

1816		W. Scott Antiquary I 37: You [...] whirled them to the back of beyont to look at the auld Roman camp.
1853		De Quincey Spanish Military Nun in Works III 12: Ready to cut and run for port anywhere, which port [...] is to be looked for at the back of beyond .
1888		W.A. Paton Down the Islands n.p.: I sat down... with no more notion that I should find myself at dinner-time that day at sea, than I have... of setting out tomorrow to seek my fortune in the uttermost part of the mysterious country known as the back of beyond [F&H].
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 July 17/1: Have been living in pubs all along the coach routes Back-o’-Beyond and Back-o’-Out-Back for three months.
1912		A. Wright Rung In (1931) 257: He’s been used to back o’ beyond, where women are scarce.
1923		‘Sapper’ Jim Maitland (1953) 49: It’s only we who have lived at the back of beyond who run across them.
1941		Barnard ‘Dry Spell’ in Mann Coast to Coast 156: ‘Where’s that?’ I felt an insatiable curiosity. ‘Back o’ beyond.’.
1947		P. Newton Wayleggo (1953) 78: We set out for the back-of-beyond, a twenty-four miles walk.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 229/2: back of beyond – the most remote areas of Australia.
1965		L. Dunne Goodbye to the Hill (1966) 169: We left Dublin at six in the evening and drove to the back of beyond, not getting there until nine o’clock.
1974		P. Adam-Smith Barcoo Salute 160: If you apply the term ‘Back o’ Beyond,’ to this area, Port Augusta is Beyond.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 5: Back of Beyond: The interior of Australia, but used in a rather wistful sense as in, ‘Back of Beyond where a man can feel free’, or some such rubbish. Invariably uttered by a city dweller who would die of thirst and heatstroke if he attempted to leave the inner suburbs.
1994		P. Quigley Borderland 210: I always thought I lived in the back of beyond.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

a very long way away.

1897		Clarence & Richmond Examiner (NSW) 16 Nov 4/4: Those of the Committee who belong to the Assembly draw their Parliamentary honorarium with regularity and despatch, whether they are present in the parliamentary marble halls, or whether they are chasing the festive camel back of Bourke.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 9 Nov. Red Page/3: Where the mulga paddocks are wild and wide, / That’s where the pick of the stockmen ride / At the Back o’ Bourke! / Under the dust clouds dense and brown, / Moving southward by tank and town, / That’s where the Queensland mobs come down / Out at the Back o’ Bourke!
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Aug. 16/2: Not long ago a publican, living out the ‘other side of Bourke,’ won a very big prize in Tattersall’s.
1905		Barrier Miner Broken Hill, NSW) 22 July 5/4: Schools Inspector D. E. Fraser left this morning per coach for Bourke and what he terms ‘Beyond-Back-o’-Bourke’.
1907		H. Lawson ‘The Country Girl’ in Roderick (1967–9) II 238: She thinks of men who Live and Work / For Sweetheart and for Wife, / And, though it be as far as Bourke / Are true to Country life.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Dec. 14/3: As for his sneer concerning ‘squatters’ darlings,’ the writer spent his boyhood back of Bourke [...] and shearers did know when sheep were wet.
1918		Kia Ora Coo-ee 15 July 5/1: Our troop corporal, ‘Bluey’ Jones, hailing from ‘Back o’ Sunset,’ was getting about with two indelible stripes resplendent on his old felt, when the sergt.-major pulled him up with, ‘Have you got any chevrons?’ […] ‘Blowed if I know, Major; but I suffer pretty badly with corns.’ [...] Mick Cluney and Billy Green both hailed from the same town, somewhere ‘Out-back o’ Sunset,’ and to outward appearances they were deadly enemies.
1930		Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Dec. 12/2: He [i.e. a cadger] had come to town from Back o’ Bourke to see the Minister about a wheat scheme.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 189: Back o’ Bourke signifies a great distance inland.
1965		B. Wannan Fair Go, Spinner 158: Have you ever bin back-o’-Bourke?
1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 18: ‘I’m driving this car out to a one horse town called Eucharong.’ ‘Never heard of it.’ ‘You wouldn’t. It’s way back o’Bourke. Beyond the Black Stump’.
1972		A. Chipper Aussie Swearers Guide 66: The same cocky will get even more snaky (angry) if you name his place of orighin as one of these very rural outposts: The Never-Never, Woop Woop, Back of Bourke, Snake Gully or Beyond the Black Stump.
1986		C. Bowles G’DAY 81: The Outback is somewhere out the back of Bourke, Woop Woop and Bullamakanka, the other side of the rabbit-proof fence.
1999		Age (Melbourne) 24 Nov. 75/2: Colourful expressions came from the bus: the back o’ Bourke, [...] silly as a curlew, rare as hen’s teeth.
2003		Jennifer ‘Australian Sl. Phrases’ Jennifer’s Jibberish 🌐 Back of Burke ... a long way away.
2006		R. Hughes Things I Didn’t Know (2007) 116: [...] an effort to sound as if I, like he, came from the back of Bourke.
2018		R. O’Neill ‘Ocker’ in The Drover’s Wives (2019) 180: He’d been out back of Bourke for six months [...] trying to make a quid.
2022		in D. Andrew Aussie Sl.

(Irish) very far away.

1826		Waterford Mail 10 June 4/5: Stuart’s a stranger —just come to this land ‘From the back of God Speed’.
1829		M. Archer-Shee Old Court II 73: Transported [...] the Lord knows where, to wander among wild maraudin’ divils, and black negers, at the back of God speed.
1833		Westmorland Gaz. 24 Aug. 1/4: Ax him if he didn’t fust aggravate me by saying that the Princes of Iveagh lived at the back of God speed.
1841		Mr & Mrs S.C. Hall Ireland I 263: And she hundreds of miles away, at the back of God-speed.
1858		Wexford Indep. 31 July 2/5: Wesford [Railways] shall no longer be obnoxious to the imputation of being ‘at the back of God speed’.
1866		All Year Round 13 Jan. 6/1: Even in a wretched place like this, at the back of God speed, in a wretched street.
1879		Graphic (London) 13 Sept. 24/1: We have been here now, ‘at the back of God’s speed’ as our host stules it, since [etc.].
1899		Blackburn Standard 8 Apr. 9/3: We could have found plenty to say about this particular line, which runs from Cork ‘to the back of God speed’.
1908		B.E. Grimshaw Strange South Seas 29: Tahiti, therefore, is quite, as the Irish say, ‘at the back of God-speed’.
1910		P.W. Joyce Eng. As We Speak It In Ireland.
1920		D.S. Shorter Dull Day in London 99: The little soulless ones on their way to the back of God-speed, where I must not go.
1986		P. O’Farrell Tell me, Sean O’Farrell 31: My father [...] hailed from a place at the back of God speed in the County Roscommon.

see back-ah-yard

see back-ah-yard

surreptitiously, on the side.

1995

J. Cameron Vinnie Got Blown Away 34: They were big business but did a bit off the back.