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Among leather dealers, the thickest and stoutest tanned hides.

A saw (as a tenon saw) whose blade is stiffened by an added metallic back.

Whatever is thrown back in its course, as water. Slackwater, or the backset caused by the overflow. Harper's Mag.

One living in the back or outlying districts of a community. The English backsettlers of Leinster and Munster. Macaulay.

In Egypt and the Turkish empire, a gratuity; a "tip".

The hinder part, posteriors, or rump of a person or animal.

The reading of the leveling staff in its unchanged position when the leveling instrument has been taken to a new position; a sight directed backwards to a station previously occupied. Cf. Foresight, n., 3.

To slide back; to fall away; esp. to abandon gradually the faith and practice of a religion that has been professed.

One who backslides.

Slipping back; falling back into sin or error; sinning. Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord. Jer. iii. 14.

An instrument formerly used for taking the altitude of the heavenly bodies, but now superseded by the quadrant and sextant; -- so called because the observer turned his back to the body observed.

Private; indirect; secret; intriguing; as if finding access by the back stairs. A backstairs influence. Burke. Female caprice and backstairs influence. Trevelyan.

A rope or stay extending from the masthead to the side of a ship, slanting a little aft, to assist the shrouds in supporting the mast. [ Often used in the plural.]

A backer. [Obs.]

To sew with backstitches; as, to backstitch a seam.

In baseball, a fence, prop. at least 90 feet behind the home base, to stop the balls that pass the catcher; also, the catcher himself.

A female baker. [Obs.]

A sword with one sharp edge.

An extended upper part, as of a mountain or ridge. [The mountains] their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds. Milton.

A thin stuff used for the backs of framed pictures, mirrors, etc.