BACKWARDS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Backwards

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/bˈækwərdz/ Listen

adverb

Backwards, Backward adv.

With the back in advance or foremost; as, to ride backward.

Toward the back; toward the rear; as, to throw the arms backward.

On the back, or with the back downward. "Thou wilt fall backward."

Toward, or in, past time or events; ago. "Some reigns backward."

By way of reflection; reflexively.

From a better to a worse state, as from honor to shame, from religion to sin. "The work went backward."

In a contrary or reverse manner, way, or direction; contrarily; as, to read backwards. "We might have... beat them backward home."

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Etymology of 'Backwards'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Backwards" Quotes from Famous Books

... spelled backwards," Dundee explained. "Possibly because he considered it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh—and married her under that name shortly afterward. ...

— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... inferred that our precautions had prevented the execution of the design formed against particular persons, but it was believed there was some mischief hatching at the Chancellor's against the public, because sergeants were running backwards and forwards, and Ondedei went thither four times ...

— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... exploring expedition, if only the state of the ice permit a suitable steamer to force a passage in that sea. In order to form a judgment on this point, it may perhaps be necessary to cast a brief glance backwards over the attempts which have been made to penetrate in the direction which the projected ...

— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... at the machines. These responded to touches upon their key-boards by going through uncanny internal agitations. Then out from a mysterious somewhere would come a small thin strip of almost hot metal, the width of a newspaper column and marked along one edge with letters printed backwards. ...

— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... meet; and I was wrong in sending you to mourn. They look on life as a huge tumour from which death sets them free. All the same they know not where they were before birth, nor where they will be after death. They ignore their passions. They take no account of their ears and eyes. Backwards and forwards through all eternity, they do not admit a beginning or an end. They stroll beyond the dust and dirt of mortality, to wander in the realms of inaction. How should such men trouble themselves with the conventionalities of this world, or care what ...

— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

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