Chapter Back and Edge to Badaud of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Backbite (To) To slander behind one's back.

"The only thing in which all parties agreed was to backbite the manager." - p. 193. W. Irving: Traveller, Buckthorn ,

Backbone (The) The main stay.

"Sober ...practical men ... constitute the moral backbone of the country." - W Booth: In Darkest England (Part i. 2, p. 17).

To the backbone. Thoroughly, as true to the backbone.

"A union man, and a nationalist to the backbone." - T. Roosevelt: T. H. Benton , chap. v. p. 113.

Backgammon is the Anglo-Saxon bac gamen (back game), so called because the pieces (in certain circumstances) are taken up and obliged to go back to enter at the table again.

Background Placed in the background, i.e. made of no consequence. Pictures have three distances, called grounds: the foreground, where the artist is supposed to be; the middle ground, where the most salient part of the picture is placed, and the background or distance, beyond which the eye cannot penetrate.

Back-hander A blow on the face with the back of the hand. Also one who takes back the decanter in order to hand himself another glass before the decanter is passed on.

"I'll take a back-hander, as Clive don't seem to drink." - Thackeray: The Newcomes.

Back-speer (To) To cross-examine. (Scotch.)

"He has the wit to lay the scene in such a remote ... country that nobody should be able to back-speer him." - Sir W. Scott: The Betrothed (Introduction).

Back-stair Influence Private or unrecognised influence. It was customary to build royal palaces with a staircase for state visitors, and another for those who sought the sovereign upon private matters. If any one wanted a private interview with royalty, it was highly desirable to conciliate those appointed to guard the back stairs, as they could admit or exclude a visitor.

"Once, we confess, beneath the patriot's cloak,
From the cracked bag the dropping guineas broke,
And, jingling down the back stairs, told the crew
Old Cato is as great a rogue as you." Pope: Epistle to Lord Bathurst, 35--8.

Backwardation (Stockbrokers' term). The sum paid by a speculator on a "bear account" (i.e. a speculation on a fall in the price of certain stock), in order to postpone the completion of the transaction till the next settling day. (See Contango.)

Backward Blessing (Muttering a). Muttering a curse. To say the Lord's Prayer backwards was to invoke the devil.

Backwater (1) Water at the lower end of a millrace to check the speed of the wheel. (2) A current of water from the inland, which clears off the deposit of sand and silt left by the action of the sea; as the Backwater of Weymouth.

Bacon The Bacon of Theology. Bishop Butler, author of the Analogy. (1692--1752.)

Bacon's brazen head. (See Brazen.)

To baste your bacon. To strike or scourge one. The Saxons were called "hogs" by their Norman lords. Henry VIII spoke of the common people as the "swinish multitude"; and Falstaff says to the travellers at Gadshill, "On, bacons, on!" (1Henry IV, ii. 2). Bacon is the outside portion of the sides of pork, and may be considered generally as the part which would receive a blow.

To save one's bacon. To save oneself from injury.

"But as he rose to save his bacon,
By hat and wig he was forsaken." Coombe: Dr. Syntax, canto vi. line 240.