Word Type
Back can be an adjective, a noun, an adverb or a verb.
back used as an adjective:
- Near the rear.
"Go in the back door of the house." - Not current.
"I’d like to find a back issue of that magazine." - Far from the main area.
"They took a back road." - Produced in the back of the mouth.
""U" in "rude" is a back vowel."
Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →
back used as a noun:
- The rear of body, especially the part between the neck and the end of the spine and opposite the chest and belly.
"Could you please scratch my back?" - The spine and associated tissues.
"I hurt my back lifting that dictionary." - The side of any object which is opposite the front or useful side.
"Turn the book over and look at the back." - The reverse side; the side that is not normally seen.
"I hung the clothes on the back of the door." - That which is farthest away from the front.
"He sat in the back of the room." - Area behind, such as the backyard of a house
"We'll meet out in the back of the library." - The part of something that goes last.
"The car was near the back of the train." - The side of a blade opposite the side used for cutting.
"Tap it with the back of your knife." - The part of a piece of clothing which covers the back.
"I still need to finish the back of your dress." - The edge of a book which is bound.
"The titles are printed on the backs of the books." - The backrest, the part of a piece of furniture which receives the human back.
"Can you fix the back of this chair?" - Upper part of a natural object which is considered to resemble an animal's back.
"The small boat raced over the backs of the waves." - That part of the body that bears clothing.
- In some team sports, a position behind most players on the team.
"The backs were lined up in an I formation." - The keel and keelson of a ship.
"The ship's back broke in the pounding surf." - The inside margin of a page.
- The roof of a horizontal underground passage.
- Effort, usually physical.
"Put some back into it!" - Large and attractive buttocks.
Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →
back used as an adverb:
- (Not comparable) To or in a previous condition or place.
"He gave back the money." - Away from the front or from an edge.
"Sit all the way back in your chair." - In a manner that impedes.
"Fear held him back."
An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective (very red), verb (quietly running), or another adverb (very carefully). Learn more →
back used as a verb:
- To go in the reverse direction.
"The train backed into the station." - To support.
"I back you all the way." - the change direction contrary to its normal pattern (anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in the southern)
- to brace the yards so that the wind presses on the front of the sail, to slow the ship
- to lay out a second, smaller anchor to provide additional holding power
Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →
Related Searches
What type of word is back?
- Adjective usage: Go in the back door of the house.
- Adjective usage: I’d like to find a back issue of that magazine.
- Adjective usage: They took a back road.
- Adjective usage: That chore has been in the back of my mind for weeks.
- Adjective usage: "U" in "rude" is a back vowel.
- Noun usage: Could you please scratch my back?
- Noun usage: I hurt my back lifting that dictionary.
- Noun usage: Turn the book over and look at the back.
- Noun usage: I hung the clothes on the back of the door.
- Noun usage: He sat in the back of the room.
- Noun usage: We'll meet out in the back of the library.
- Noun usage: The car was near the back of the train.
- Noun usage: Tap it with the back of your knife.
- Noun usage: I still need to finish the back of your dress.
- Noun usage: The titles are printed on the backs of the books.
- Noun usage: Can you fix the back of this chair?
- Noun usage: The small boat raced over the backs of the waves.
- Noun usage: The backs were lined up in an I formation.
- Noun usage: The ship's back broke in the pounding surf.
- Noun usage: Put some back into it!
- Adverb usage: He gave back the money.
- Adverb usage: He needs his money back
- Adverb usage: He was on vacation, but now he’s back.
- Adverb usage: The office fell into chaos when you left, but now order is back.
- Adverb usage: Sit all the way back in your chair.
- Adverb usage: Step back from the curb.
- Adverb usage: Fear held him back.
- Verb usage: The train backed into the station.
- Verb usage: I back you all the way.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of back are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of back, and guess at its most common usage.
Word Type
For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.
The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.
Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.
Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.
Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).
