Backish
adj, slang ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Somewhat at the back. informal, not-comparable
"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.”"
- 2 Somewhat or approximately back. not-comparable
"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."
Example
More examples"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.”"
Etymology
From back + -ish.
More for "backish"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.