noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   An assigned date that is earlier than the current or true date.

   "The backdates on the clearance forms made the little man's papers worthless […]"

Verb

1. 1
   To give or assign a date to a document that is earlier than the current or true date.
2. 2
   make effective from an earlier date wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

antedatedateforedatepostdatepredateupdate

Antonyms

All antonyms

overdatepostdate

Example

More examples

"The backdates on the clearance forms made the little man's papers worthless […]"

Etymology

From back + date.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.