BACKBONE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Backbone

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/bˈækbˌoʊn/ Listen

noun

Backbone n.

The column of bones in the back which sustains and gives firmness to the frame; the spine; the vertebral or spinal column.

Anything like, or serving the purpose of, a backbone. "The lofty mountains on the north side compose the granitic axis, or backbone of the country." "We have now come to the backbone of our subject."

Firmness; moral principle; steadfastness. "Shelley's thought never had any backbone."

To the backbone, through and through; thoroughly; entirely. "Staunch to the backbone."

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Etymology of 'Backbone'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Backbone" Quotes from Famous Books

... not immediately go to Ballyards. Eleanor could not reply to his letter, but Mrs. MacDermott wrote that she was recovering rapidly from her illness and that the baby was a fine, healthy child. "A MacDermott to the backbone," she wrote. "It's queer work that keeps a man out of his bed half the night and won't let him go to his wife when she's having a child! Your Uncle William isn't looking well ... he feels the weight of his years and the work on him ... and he is worried about ...

— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... that fatal combination of Spain and Africa, when the Vandals ensconced themselves in both provinces by 428 and the Vandal fleet (with Majorca and the islands for its bases) cut off Rome from her corn supplies and broke the backbone of ancient civilization, which was the Mediterranean sea? Not once alone in the history of Europe has the triumph of a hostile rule in Africa and Spain ...

— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... had never seen her like that before; she had always been eight-and-twenty. But age became her well—she looked so benignly beautiful and calm and grand that I was awed—and quick, chill waves went down my backbone. ...

— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... of the profession and of the public. Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, 'Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours,' and, second, 'No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease.' In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, 'He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness ...

— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the rights of man. Withdraw these causes, and the effects would be rapidly reversed. Northern officers and men could not be trusted to fraternize with the slave-holding aristocracy, previous to the time when the backbone of the institution of Slavery should have been effectually broken; not because they are bad men, but because they are men, and would act, under similar circumstances, as men—alike Northern, Southern, and European men—have ...

— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

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