backish
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]backish (not comparable)
- (informal) Somewhat at the back.
- 2022 August 28, Barbara Ellen, “The week in TV: House of the Dragon; The Accused: National Treasures on Trial; Welcome to Wrexham and more”, in The Guardian[1]:
- After the offer is graciously accepted (their arms are bitten off!), the unlikely Hollywood owners wisely take a back-ish seat to the darkly witty Wrexham folk, who love their team almost as much as they love slagging them off: “He puts in the shift, doesn’t he?” “So do the postmen. You wouldn’t play them on the wing.”
- (linguistics, of a vowel) Somewhat or approximately back.
- 2000, Andrew L. Sihler, Language History: An introduction, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 196–197:
- The value of the Latin letter O was for a virtual certainty a mid, back, rounded vowel. If therefore this letter is used to render a vowel in a previously unwritten (ancient) language, […] it is to be inferred that the phoneme in question was probably some kind of middish, backish, rounded vowel, or more accurately, included such phones prominently in its allophonic range.