Blackback
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 An adolescent male gorilla or chimpanzee.
"The author worked with two main study groups of gorilla in that region. Each contained a fully mature male (silverback), who was the obvious leader of the group, and a younger male of around 9 years of age (blackback), who had not yet assumed full adult morphology."
- 2 The great black-backed gull. UK
Example
More examples"The author worked with two main study groups of gorilla in that region. Each contained a fully mature male (silverback), who was the obvious leader of the group, and a younger male of around 9 years of age (blackback), who had not yet assumed full adult morphology."
Etymology
From black + back.
Related phrases
More for "blackback"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.