Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK/Irish juv.) a lift on the back of a bicycle.

2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 backer n. Used for a lift on the back of a bike (sitting on the carrier with one leg dangling each side of the wheels). Usually in the sense of ‘Giz a backer, mister!’ – Give me a lift on the back of your bike.
2002		Blue Pages (Dublin) ‘Dublin Dictionary’ 🌐 Backer To become passenger on bicycle in either the crossbar or seated position.

(Scot. juv.) a lift on the back of a bicycle.

1985

M. Munro Patter 8: to give someone a backie [...] to let someone sit behind you on your bicycle.

(US) the act of reneging on a promise.

1983

R. Price Breaks 142: Yes, I was definitely hired, no backsies.

(US) a privy.

1908		DN III 288: Backhouse . . . also called backy.
1949		R.I. McDavid ‘Grist from the Atlas Mill’ AS XXIV 106: Backy [...] Back-house, n. Privy.
1967–70		in DARE.

see separate entry.

see separate entry.

(US) backwards; also as adj. meaning confused, muddled.

1951		J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye (1958) 45: You always do everything backasswards.
1971		Playboy May 42: The title role [...] is based on several back-assward assumptions about comedy.
2004		Confessions of a Christian Agnostic 5 Oct. 🌐 Truth to tell, I think we’ve got the whole thing backassward.

see back-door n. (1)

see separate entry.

(Aus.) the anus.

1985

B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 107: The occasional little stewardess who has rashly settled for a bottom-of-the-range Cartier watch and a Bedouin bazooka up her back bottie.

see separate entries.

see separate entries.

to insult someone or disparage something.

1896

Ade Artie (1963) 7: Mrs. Morton got me a good seat and then back-clapped the show a little before it opened up.

see separate entries.

see separate entries.

a back street.

1930		(con. 1910–20s) D. Mackenzie Hell’s Kitchen 118: Back doubles ... back streets.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 1: Back doubles: Back streets.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 98: Tied up in these back doubles.
1956		P. Wildeblood Way of Life 35: It’s in one of those back-doubles round by Soho Square.
1977		in D. Powis Signs of Crime.

the anus.

1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) IV 738: Sally had had a prick up her back as well as her front-entrance.
1901		More Forbidden Fruit 11: Mary could hardly yet believe that my now enormous tool had really been up her back entrance.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 502: You were nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed.

1. the anus.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

2. anal intercourse.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

see separate entry.

see separate entry.

see separate entry.

(US) an out-of-the-way, usu. barren piece of land.

[1907		Des Moines Register IO) 12 Mar. 6/1: Mr Brandt [...] believed it was a mistake to sell the back forty acres].
1910		Detroit Free Press (MI) 18 Sept. 6/1: Take these halters and go down in the back forty and find Belgium and Wild Eyes [i.e. horses] and turn them in the paddock.
1923		Fresno Morn. Repub. (CA) 28 Dec. 13/3: [of land used for a garbage dump] [headline] ‘Back Forty’ To Be Sold As Aid For ‘Upper Forty’ .
1932		diary in Nebraska Beacon (Lincoln, NE) (9 May 1940) 4/2: My 9 — This morning I went to plant corn in the back forty and finished the field by noon.
1950		Whittier News (CA) 6 Jan. 14/1: We are now enjoying the pine peaches picked from the trees on our back forty.
1956		A.S.C. Ker Vocabulary West Texas 89: Waste-land . . . ‘The back forty’ [DARE].
1969		L. Sorden Lumberjack Lingo [...] Back forty—Way back in the brush—a long haul [DARE].
1991		B. Hamper Rivethead (1992) 195: Just a couple of nine-year prostitutes of the Industrial Cycle sniffing around the back forty for an exorcism you could dance to.

(US prison) an inmate’s death in prison.

1929		C.G. Givens ‘The Chatter of Guns’ in Sat. Eve. Post 13 Apr.; list extracted in AS VI:2 (1930) 131: backgate parole, n. phr. To die in prison.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.
1936		L. Pound ‘American Euphemisms for Dying’ in AS XI:3 199: Take the back gate parole. (Die in prison).
1944		‘Jiver’s Bible’ in D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 218: south gate discharge Death of a prisoner while in jail.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 21/1: Back-gate Commute [...] Death in prison. ‘To take a back-gate commute’ — To commit suicide. ‘To get a back-gate commute’ — To die. [...] Back-gate parole. (P) See Back-gate commute.
1960		(con. 1950-1960) R.A. Freeman Dict. Inmate Sl. (Walla Walla, WA) 4: Back-gate-parole – to die while doing time in the stir.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 819: south gate discharge – At Stateville prison, when an inmate dies and his body is removed in a pine box through the South Gate.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak 15: Back gate discharge (US 19c) – the death of a prisoner.
1992		Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 104: Back Gate Exit A term used to indicate an inmate dying in prison. [Ibid.] 105: Pine Box Parole When an inmate dies in prison. (Archaic: back gate commute).

fighting among women.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 14/1: Back-hairing (Street). Feminine fighting, in which the occipital locks suffer severely.

see back-hander n. (3)

see separate entries.

see separate entry.

a privy.

c.1566		Harman Caveat for Common Cursetours in Viles & Furnivall (1907) 32: They haue cleane strawe in some barne or backehouse.
1577		Misogonus in Farmer (1906) IV i: In time, indeed, Eupelas! or otherwise I’d been i’ th’ backhouse ditch.
1592		Greene Defence of Conny-Catching 21: At last [she] brought him into a backe roome much like a backhouse.
1844		Ipswich Jrnl 16 Mar. 2/4: A Dwelling [...] containing two front rooms, backhouse, muck bin, privy, shed.
1849		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 1 Sept. n.p.: [W]hose face resembles an old ham that has been hung out to dry in some back house.
1866		Public Ledger (Memphis, TN) 18 Sept. 3/2: They will inspect all private premises [...] and see that the yards, back-houses, privies and cellars are cleaned.
1877		Mexico Wkly Ledger (MO) 25 Jan. 4/6: Any [...] person who shall cause [...] accumulation of [...] animal or vegetable matter or excrement of any kind thereon, whether in a backhouse, or [...] which will during the warm season of the year exhale offensive, unhealthy gases.
1905		‘Central Connecticut Word-List’ in DN III:i 2: back-house, n. Privy.
1910		B.L. Bowen ‘Word-List From Western New York’ in DN III:vi 436: back-house, n. A privy.
1932		(con. 1917–19) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 493: What Dick liked best in the garden was the little backhouse.
1944		J.S. Pennell Hist. of Rome Hanks 20: It smelt warm and pissy in that timber [...] it might have been a backhouse in Ioway.
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 63: Never seed a toilet till I was seventeen year old. I’d heard of backhouses but never seed one.
1968		T. Wolfe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1969) 115: Kesey [...] asks Sandy to come with him to the backhouse, the shack by the creek.
1976		E. Dahlberg Olive of Minerva 164: Should she smell of a back-house, she was your most toothsome confection.

see separate entries.

see separate entries.

(W.I.) the buttocks.

1943

cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).

see separate entries.

see separate entry.

1. an irrelevant person, a ‘has been’; used esp. of a former lover, now discarded, or a person or a thing that is behind the times, out of date or useless; thus back-number v., to discard; similarly used of objects.

1884		G.W. Peck Peck’s Boss Book 142: Boys, you are rapidly becoming ‘old back numbers’.
1890		flier for the Bella Union Theater (San Francisco) in Asbury Barbary Coast (1933) 131: No Back Numbers, but as Sweet and Charming Creatures As Ever Escaped a Female Seminary.
1901		A. Binstead More Gal’s Gossip 127: There is quite an engaging simplicity about these quaint, out-of-date, human back-numbers.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 29/1: I felt pleased as Punch in beer, an’ rorty, too – you bet! / Thinks I: ‘Count one to Sailor Bill – he ain’t back-numbered yet.’.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 8 June 6/2: Barry beat him twice in short order, said Tim being a very back number now.
1905		Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 11 June 33/4: A Back Number [...] ‘Up to date? My goodness! [...] Why, she is years behind the styles!’.
1907		Lone Hand (Sydney) June li: [advert] A Citizen of the Commonnwealth is a ‘back number’ politically and financially [...] if he doesn’t regularly read ‘the bulletin’.
1908		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘The Sweet Old Names’ Sporting Times 4 Apr. 1/3: I have told fairy stories to Mary, / And to Jane I’ve oft whispered a wheeze; / But they’re chestnuts to Maisie, back numbers to Daisy, / And the veriest ‘duds’ to Louise.
1914		M. Glass Potash And Perlmutter 191: Since when would they mistake a back number like you for an up-to-date feller like Rifkin, Abe?
1916		J. Buchan Greenmantle (1930) 223: He was a man of remarkable qualities, which would have brought him to the highest distinction in the Stone Age. But for all that he and his kind were back numbers.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 478: You have that something within, the higher self. [...] You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 68: A fourflushing old back-number like Chan Mott.
1930		E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 73: Flapper: He was batty about her, but she found him a back number.
1935		A. Christie Three Act Tragedy (1964) 35: He’s getting old. He’s a back number.
1947		P.H. Newvy Agents and Witnesses 145: He was going to be a back number; whether as President or anything else he would be a back number.
1950		(con. 1936–46) K.S. Prichard Winged Seeds (1984) 146: But I’m a back number, these days.
1961		R.M. Dashwood Provincial Daughter (2002) 198: Had better make my mind up, once and for all, that I am a Back Number.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1889		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 30 Nov. 2/2: I would interrupt the flow of back number souvenirs by ordering beer.
1892		Newcastle Courant 20 Aug. 2/4: My husband is a grand noble man and I won’t let any wife of a second-hand, back-number loafer say ought against him.
1898		F. Dumont Dumont’s Joke Book 41: The egg was a back number egg. It wasn’t exactly bad – but the hen that laid it must have had a grudge against the farmer.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 136: The annual [...] sales when back number and out-of-season goods are boomed off at supposed reductions.
1914		M. Glass Potash And Perlmutter 145: Why should an up-to-date family like the Tuckmans give their boys such back-number names like Jake or Moe?
1915		S. Ford Torchy, Private Sec. 132: Them back-number costumes of hers looked odd enough mixed in with all the harem effects and wired-neck ruffs.

(US) the buttocks.

1987

personal ad. restroom wall in Murray & Murrell Lang. Sadomasochism (1989) 35: Are you an amazon with a soft back parlor that needs a gentle man’s touch?

a bribe, a payoff.

1999

J. Cameron Brown Bread in Wengen [ebook] ‘Some geezer sorted and you get a back pocket for the intro’.

(US) the buttocks.

1950		WELS.
1953		‘John Eagle’ Hoodlums (2021) 33: ‘I watched you two on the dance [...] That doll could put a piece of chalk in her back porch, spell Mississippi and dot all the I’s’.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1989–2003		R.O. Scott Gay Sl. Dict. 🌐 back porch: 1. the rectal opening; the anus. 2. the buttocks.

see back-door n. (3)

(drugs) rolling a marijuana cigarette so that only one layer of paper surrounds the mix.

2000–2

www.overgrow.com 🌐 The advantage of the backroll is less paper, which means better taste and better burning. There is only one layer of paper on this joint so it’s very fragile. This roll is actually quite easy.

(UK gay) one who enjoys the semi-public sex of the (often dark) back rooms in gay clubs.

[1989–2003		R.O. Scott Gay Sl. Dict. 🌐 backroom: an orgy room in a bar, bathhouse, or toilet. A dark room designated for sex in clubs or bars].
1992		D. Jarman diary 2 Sept. Smiling in Slow Motion (2000) 211: Karl was a back-room boy, who chalked up his conquests on a blackboard as if he were playing darts.
2004		website title 🌐 Backroom boys. Hot boys in the backroom fucking each other!

a scrounger who frequents taverns in the hope of finding someone willing to buy them a drink.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 14/1: Back row hopper (Theatrical). Chiefly used in taverns affected by the commoner members of ‘the profession’. ‘He’s a back row hopper’ is said of an impecunious man who enters one of these houses on the pretence of looking for somebody, and the certain hope of finding somebody ready and willing to pay for a drink.

see separate entry.

see separate entry.

to have anal intercourse.

1975

G. Legman No Laughing Matter 262: ‘Back-scuttle’ [...] specifically refers in American slang (as also ‘back-scull’) to rectal intercourse.

see separate entries.

see separate entry.

anal intercourse.

2020

(ref. to 1990s) Twitter 7 May 🌐 I remember back in the mid 90’s anal used to be called backshafting [...] the loss of that term is the nexus point for the fall of civilisation.

(UK black) anal intercourse.

1997		‘Q’ Deadmeat 44: Ah put one knee down, one up an gi har ah back shot.
2003		UrbanDictionary.com 🌐 backshot. 1.The partaking of sexual intercourse from the behind 2.To take it up the ass.
2014		Grizzly ‘Mandem Salute’ 🎵 Like that girl give backshot / That girl give ucky (badders).

see separate entry.

(Aus./US) cheek, insolence.

1906		E. Hubbard Love, Life and Work 🌐 The sergeant hears everything, and his reply to backslack is a straight-arm jab in the jaw.
1935		Southern Cross (Adelaide) 24 May 11/2: Some of you jokers will come the ounce about this. But that’s all right about you. We’re not taking any back slack, and if you don’t break it down we’ll wipe you off and go you scone hot .
1945		R.S. Close Love me Sailor 68: It would have been funny to see that old shellback riding the spanker boom for giving back slack to the second mate.
1959		D. Niland Big Smoke 160: You shouldn’t give back-slack, either—not you. It’s dangerous.

(US black) (premature) death.

1944

D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 45: Thou are due for thy back slammer cutout.

of a man or woman, the anus.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

a prostitute.

1607

Middleton Michaelmas Term III i: salewood: Is she but your underput, Master Lethe? lethe: No more [...] I may grace her with the name of a courtesan, a backslider, a prostitution, or such a toy; but [...] ’tis but a plain pung.

intercourse in the rear-entry position.

a.1653		‘The Colchester Quaker’s Complaint’ in Ebsworth Merry Drollery Compleat (1875) 58: Now when in such a Saddle / A Saint will needs be riding, / Though I dare not say, / ’Tis a falling away, / May there not be some back-sliding.
1702		T. Brown Letters from the Dead to the Living in Works (1760) II 260: I had orders in every room against cathedral exercise, or bestial back-slidings, and made it ten shillings forfeiture for any that were caught in such actions.

the anus.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

(UK Und.) the back entrance to a building, the back door or window.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 226: back-slum: a back room; also the back entrance to any house or premises; thus we’ll give it ’em on the back-slum, means, we’ll get in at the back-door.
1828		‘Jon Bee’ Living Picture of London 162: To penetrate the back slum of a ‘house of resort’.
1833		H. Smith Gale Middleton 1 155: ‘I popped a bottle of heavy wet in the back slum.’ [...] his comrade brought the gin from the back room.
1834		‘Oh! Lady Touch That Lute’ in Black Joke 37: O’er yonder walk, we’ll quickly climb, / And thro’ the back slum creep.
1835		Worcester Herald 26 Dec. 4/3: Namas, run away; namas, give the crush a sicer down the back slums, run to give the officer the slip down the back streets.
1844		New Sprees of London 3: I’ll introduce you to [...] the Lushing, Chanting, and Night-cribs [...] where you may ddoss lush, or feed, from the slap club houses of St. James' to the shysiest of the Cadgers’ Kens in the back slums.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.

1. (also back slum) areas or streets known for a high proportion of criminal residents; also attrib. (see cite 1824).

1821		W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry II v: Let’s have a dive among the Cadgers in the Back Slums, in the Holy Land.
1824		J. Wight Mornings in Bow St. 277: [A]fter all, what was his offence but a trifling matter of ‘back slum’ Corinthianism? as the great chronicler of Life in London would phrase it.
1833		‘The Marriage of Dumpling Bet’ in Fal-Lal Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 23: All down the back slums of St Giles, they say, / All down the back slums where danger lurked.
1834		Australian (Sydney) 6 June 4/2: SCENE VI. Back Slums in the holy land, in a beggerly light.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 11 Feb. 2/2: We advise old ‘Dallas’ not to spend his wool money in the back slums with disreputable females.
1848		Sinks of London Laid Open 5: The lame and blind, and other disordered individuals, were said to meet nightly, in a place called the ‘back slums’.
1853		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Oct. 61/2: He educated me in a back slum, / Where light of day [...] I ne’er did see.
1859		G.A. Sala Gaslight and Daylight 167: Perambulating these shabby streets [...] known inelegantly, but expressively, as ‘back slums’ [...] dingy houses teeming with that sallow, cabbage-stalk and fried fish sort of population, indigenous to back slums.
1861		Hills & Plains I 242: The house was small, and situated in the back slums of the station; it commanded a cheerful view of a large Native bazaar.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 74/1: An opening leading from the street to the back slums beyond.
1870		Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 17 Jan. 3/2: When Cardinal Wiseman adopted ‘back slums,’ which had been left in the gutter of slang by Pierce Egan, the term ceased to belong to blackguardism.
1876		M.E. Braddon Joshua Haggard’s Daughter II 252: Not in fetid alleys and festering London back-slums only is man’s fight with difficulty a bitter and crushing battle.
1878		S. James Vagabond Papers (5th series) 45: This is hardly the location in which one would expect to find a ‘back-slum,’ but I presume it is a relic of the days when the convict barracks were close at hand.
1882		Bristol Magpie 29 June 4/1: A back slum ‘pub,’ [...] to gratify the aristocratic instincts of its patrons, is dignified as a ‘wine and spirit vaults’.
1886		F. Hume Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1889) 95: ‘A disreputable woman, one far more likely to come from the back slums than Toorak’ .
1890		C. Hindley Vocab. and Gloss. in True Hist. of Tom and Jerry 155: Back-slums. Beggars’ meeting places; Dyot Street, St Giles [...] Back Slummers, dirty, common, low, and vagrant people who reside in the Back-slums.
1895		Truth (Sydney) 10 Mar. 1/3: White waifs and strays in the back slums of Australian cities.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 16 Nov. 3/5: ‘[A] natural and hereditary desire to bestride a blanky donkey rouud the back slums of Jerusalem’.
1948		J. Furphy Buln-Buln and the Brolga (1971) 2: The most direct route to my sylvan destination was along one of the main streets; but, for reasons of my own, I dodged round by the back slums.
1960		Aus. Women’s Wkly 1 June 43/4: ‘We shall be reduced to seeking lodgings, very likely in some dreadful back-slum, and eat black-puddings, and turn our dresses, and — ’.

2. (UK und.) the servants’ quarters in a large house.

1824

letter 28 Dec. in Pierce Egan’s Life in London (10 Apr. 1825) 83/2: [L]ittle Davy, with myself [...] proceeded through this room, and through the grand hall dor [sic], leading to the back slums, or slavey's apartments (servants’ rooms).

(US) a burglar.

1834

Sun (N.Y.) 20 June 2/2: Off.—I heard you used to be a good Backsman. — Have you ‘Ogled a Dummy’ any where? Con.—Yes! a first rate one for a ‘smash,’ and pretty good on a ‘burst’.

(US gay) uncouth, ill-mannered.

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 24: backstage 1. uncouth, wicked, rude ‘That remark was so backstage’ 2. unpretentious, unrehearsed, genuine.

1. a member of a garrotting gang who keeps watch and provides physical assistance to the actual garrotter if necessary.

1863		Cornhill Mag. in DU (1968).
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

2. a thief’s accomplice.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

(Aus./N.Z.) a supporter, an accomplice, one on whom one can rely; also as v., to support [cricket jargon backstop, a fielder who stands behind the wicket-keeper to stop any balls the keeper may have missed].

1893		Illus. Sydney News 11 Mar. 17: She, a light, quick child of 5, had been invaluable to him as a backstop.
1919		Eyre’s Peninsula Trib. (Cowell, SA) 27 June 1/4: In my official capacity as back stop to the cook, I staggered aoross to the woolshed from the galley.
1923		Dly Mail (Brisbane) 29 May 9/3: A ‘Backstop’s Troubles [...] Complainant was several times described as Luther’s ‘backstop’ in an argument which he was alleged to have sought with defendant.
1939		J. Worby Spiv’s Progress 19: Although I knew a thing or two, I knew Joe would be a good back-stop and might show me something new .
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 79: I reckon where we’re goin’ a joker’s goin’ ter need a decent sorta backstop.
1946		A. Marshall ‘Bushman’ in Tell Us About the Turkey, Jo 95: I’m backstoppin’ ye, be Jasus.
1950		‘No. 35’ Argot in G. Simes DAUS (1993).
1962		B. Veeck Veeck — as in Wreck 333: I didn’t have Rudie Schaffer to backstop me, either.
1979		(con. 1930s) G. Stewart Leveller 33: Little Scar Face Mick, a Sicilian gambler, back-stop Matt Feitch and Cock Smith, a broken-nosed flabby youth with a lot of talk.
1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 81: I’m just going to watch in case my mate needs a backstop.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 11/1: backstop n. one who looks out for another, e.g. during a fight or a criminal job.

(US) a mistress.

1993

(ref. to 1930s) I.L. Allen City in Sl. (1995) 45: Back street [...] has been long used to label unacceptable people and behavior. A mistress was once disparaged as a back-street wife.

(US gay) that position of homosexual anal intercourse where the passive partner lies on his stomach, presenting buttocks to his partner.

1972		(ref. to late 1950s) B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 90: backswing: (late ’50s) perhaps the most common position for anal intercourse, where the passive partner lies on his belly.
1989–2003		R.O. Scott Gay Sl. Dict. 🌐.

see separate entries.

see separate entry.

(Aus. juv.) of a girl, occas. a boy, the anus.

1982

N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 48: A girl’s genitals and urinary area is her ‘front tottie’, her anus is the ‘back tottie’, and this term may also apply to a boy’s anus.

see separate entry.

1. (US) insolent talk, cheek, nonsensical talk.

1906		Indep. (US) 4 Jan. 28: But he never took anybody’s backwash and he never starved for want of a mouth [HDAS].
1928		(con. 1918) L. Nason Top Kick 143: You’re full o’ backwash!
1939		T. Wolfe Web and the Rock 39: I’m not takin’ any backwash from him.

2. liquid that remains on the chin after drinking directly from the bottle.

1993

G. Pelecanos Nick’s Trip 244: I tilted the beer bottle to my lips, drank deeply, and wiped the backwash from my chin.

3. liquid that flows back into a bottle, poss. after being in one’s mouth when one drinks straight from it.

1995		G. Pelecanos Down by the River 98: I dropped my lit butt into the top of the beer can and heard it hiss as it hit the backwash.
1996		P. Beatty White Boy Shuffle 172: Somewhere near the backwash end of the bottle, I’d guessed that Yoshiko was a rebellious teen.
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 155: Everyone agreed, reaching for their beer cans [...] mulling over which of the identical cans belonged to whom, their hands circling over the cluster of containers, wary of picking up someone else’s backwash.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.
2012		M. Lacher On the Bro’d 171: [The beer is] getting warmer and full of backwash.

see back-door n. (1)

see separate entries.

(Scot.) of a place, the worst, poorest example.

2020		A. Parks Bobby March Will Live Forever 257: Americans [...] think that because their great-grandfather came from the back arse of Limerick they’re in the bloody provos.
2022		A. Parks May God Forgive 58: ‘How did they find the body? This is the back arse of nowhere’.

(US) in confusion.

1926		DN V 385: Back-end-too [sic] [...] Reversed.
1965–70		in DARE.

see separate entry.

an excl. calling for restraint, steady on! hold it!

1927

in W.E. Collinson Contemp. Eng.