backwards

1. 1
   adverb

   Toward the rear, or in the reverse of the usual or forward direction.

   The car rolled backwards a little before the brakes finally caught.

   Reciting the alphabet backwards is harder than most people expect.

   Similarbackward

   Oppositeforwards, forward

   Note

   Older than it looks: Middle English already had bakwardis alongside bakward, and Saterland Frisian bäkove is a comparable form. The adverb usually follows a verb of motion and says how the movement is made. Railway Magazine in 1944 tells of an elderly passenger who could only alight from a train backwards, and step, roll and fall work the same way.

2. 2
   adjective

   Directed or facing toward the rear, or behind others in development or progress.

   She shot him a backwards look that stopped him mid-sentence.

   Critics called the new regulation backwards and out of touch with the times.

   Similarbackward

   Oppositeforward, progressive

   Note

   An adjective wearing an adverb's ending: the -s is the one that builds downwards and inwards, so as an adjective it carries over a mark of the directional adverb. Backward, without the -s, means the same and can stand in for it in a backward look or a backward policy. The comparison is made with more and most (more backwards, most backwards), never with -er.

3. 3
   verbdated

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of backward. The verb, meaning to delay or hold back, is dated.

   Note

   The present-tense -s form of a dated verb, backward, meaning "to keep back, delay or retard." It needs a singular subject and a direct object, as in a late frost that backwards the harvest. Because it is spelled exactly like the directional adverb, it reads as a verb only when something is being held back. When backwards simply follows walk or count, it is the adverb.

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