backs

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of back.

   The dancers arched their backs in perfect unison.

   Tiny cracks ran along the backs of the antique mirrors.

   Note

   A regular -s plural covering the countable meanings of back: the rear of the body, the part of a garment that covers it, the backrest of a chair. The slang sense for buttocks is uncountable and does not take it. The same spelling also serves the verb form in "she backs", so context decides: "the backs of the chairs" is a noun, "the committee backs the plan" a verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of back.

   The committee backs the new housing proposal without reservation.

   He backs his car out of the driveway at the same time each morning.

   Note

   The present-tense form a singular subject takes: she backs, the wind backs. It works both ways. It is transitive when it means support (the committee backs the plan) and intransitive when it means reversing (the van backs slowly). Sailors and forecasters keep their own uses. A wind that backs shifts against its usual turn, anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern.

3. 3
   nounwith the

   The grounds behind several colleges of Cambridge University, lying along the River Cam.

   Tourists punt past the Backs to admire the college lawns from the water.

   She cycled across the Backs on her way to a lecture each morning.

   Note

   A Cambridge place name that always takes the article: the Backs, never "a back" or bare "Backs". The name pictures the riverside grounds as the colleges' back yard, and it is treated as one place, so people walk, punt or cycle across the Backs. In Cambridge talk the phrase is a proper name, not the ordinary plural, and it is capitalized accordingly.

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