Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Backwater |
BackwaterNoun1. Any backward region that is isolated from the world and resists progress. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "backwater" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1861. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Building & Civil Engineering | 1)water held or forced back in consequence of some obstruction, such as a dam or regulator, or the swelling up of the river below 2)a water reserve obtained at high tide and to be discharged at low tide. Source: European Union. (references) |
Geography | An arm of the sea usually lying parallel with the coast, behind a narrow strip of land. Source: European Union. (references) |
| A rise in the water level immediately upstream of and due to a natural or artificial obstruction. Source: European Union. (references) | |
Literature | 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. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Regression | Verb: recede, regrade, return, revert, retreat, retire; retrograde, retrocede; back out; back down; balk; crawfish, crawl; withdraw; rebound; go back, come back, turn back, hark back, draw back, fall back, get back, put back, run back; lose ground; fall astern, drop astern; backwater, put about; backtrack, take the back track; veer round; double, wheel, countermarch; ebb, regurgitate; jib, shrink, shy. |
Refluence, reflux; backwater, regurgitation, ebb, return; resilience reflection, reflexion (recoil); flip-flop, volte-face. | |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Backwater |
| Specialty definitions using "backwater": Backwater Effect, backwater flap, Backwater Flooding ♦ Permanent Control. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Slovenia | Insurance will remain a reform backwater, while many eyes are turning, with some concern, to the implications of transitioning to the euro. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Backwater" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 84.95% of the time. "Backwater" is used about 93 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 84.95% | 79 | 37,388 |
| Adjective (comparative) | 15.05% | 14 | 93,893 |
| Total | 100.00% | 93 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "backwater": backwater flap. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
backwater | 32 |
kerala backwater | 19 |
backwater valve | 18 |
backwater jacks | 7 |
backwater lyrics meat puppet | 4 |
backwater kerala resort | 3 |
backwater gambler | 3 |
backwater holiday in kerala | 2 |
backwater kerala tour | 2 |
angler backwater | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "backwater"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | stagnacion (deadlock), moçal (bayou, bog, Fen, Mars, Marsh, mire, morass, muskeg, quagmire, slew, Slough, swamp), kënetë (bog, Fen, Marsh, moor, morass, muskeg, quag, quagmire, Slough), amull (stagnant). (various references) | |
Arabic | مياه يدفع بها إلى الوراء, مياه تصد عن سبيلها, موضع خلفي منعزل, حالة ركود. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | водна диря (backwash, dead water), назадничаво общество, застояла вода (dead water, ditch water, slack), затънтено място (corner, hole, jumping-off-place, nowhere), заприщена вода, лагуна (lagoon), блато (bog, hag, mere, mire, morass, muskeg, pan, pool, swamp, water hole), интелектуален застой. (various references) | |
Chinese | 死水. (various references) | |
Czech | stojatá voda (slack water), díra (burrow, gap, hole, joint, leak, pit, puncture, rip, split, tear, vent). (various references) | |
Danish | bagvand (billabong, white water), lagune (lagoon). (various references) | |
Dutch | stuwmeer (artificial lake, barrier lake, dammed lake, man-made lake, reservoir, storage), opstuwing, lagune (lagoon), haf. (various references) | |
Farsi | مرداب (Lagoon, Marsh, Mere, Morass, Quagmire, Swamp, Swampland), جای دورافتاده (Outback), باریکه اب . (various references) | |
Finnish | seisova vesi, padotus (pounding), laguuni (lagoon), haffi. (various references) | |
French | bras mort, bassin de retenue, retenue (back rope), remous d'exhaussement, remous, longueur du remous, exhaussement, eau stagnante, eau de sous-bac, eau de retenue, coin perdu. (various references) | |
German | stauwasser (dammed-up groundwater, dammed-up water, wetness due to dammed-up groundwater, wetness due to dammed-up water), rückstau (afflux, backlock, tailback). (various references) | |
Greek | κλειστά νερά, ύδατα πίσω από διάφραγμα, στάσιμα νερά, λεκάνη συγκράτησης (dike, impounding basin, retention pond), λεκάνη ηρεμίας (stilling basin). (various references) | |
Hebrew | מצב פ'ור, חשלות (backwardness, maladjustment, primitiveness, retrogression), " (heap, wall). (various references) | |
Hungarian | tespedés (sloth, stagnancy, stagnation). (various references) | |
Italian | acqua stagnante. (various references) | |
Manx | lhingey (football pool, pond, pool, river-pool), cummal fo. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ackwaterbay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | ressaca (breakers, drug withdrawal, hangover, surf, underset, undertow, wash, withdrawal), remanso, a/gua parada, remanso (afflux, heading-up), regolfo, laguna (lagoon), água represada (millrace), água estagnada (ditheism). (various references) | |
Romanian | stagnare (atony, cessation, involution, languor, lifelessness, malaise, paralysis, stagnation), rãstoacã, japşã, gârlã (Brook, rivulet), apã stãtãtoare (dead water, slack water). (various references) | |
Russian | заводь (oxbow). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | zaostao (backward, behindhand, benighted, dilatory, retarded, stagnant), zaostalost (backwardness, retardation, retardment, stagnancy), ustajala voda (lasher, stagnant water), učmao (apathetic, apathetical, lazy), učmalost (stuffiness). (various references) | |
Spanish | remanso (eddy). (various references) | |
Swedish | bakvatten. (various references) | |
Turkish | tersine kürek çekmek, siya etmek (back the oars, back water), ilgisizlik (apathy, coolness, disinterestedness, indifference, insouciance, listlessness, neglect, phlegm, unconcern, unconcernedness), durgunluk (calm, calmness, deadlock, deadness, inaction, inactivity, inanimation, inertness, languor, placidity, recession, recessional, serenity, slack, slackness, slump, stagnancy, stagnation, stillness), durgun su (dead water, ditchwater, slack, slack water, stagnant water, standing water, still water). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | nước cuộn ngược (backwash), nước bị mái chèo đẩy ngược sự mất sức do nước đẩy ngược. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "backwater": backwaters. (additional references) | |
| |
"Backwater" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: baccata, bacciata, Basketter, Blackawton, Bokwete. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "backwater" (pronounced ba"kwô'ter) |
| 5 | -k w ô' t er | breakwater. |
| 4 | -w ô' t er | deepwater, floodwater, freshwater, headwater, rainwater, Tidewater, underwater, wastewater. |
| 3 | -ô' t er | granddaughter, manslaughter, stepdaughter. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-b-c-e-k-r-t-w" | |
-2 letters: abreact, bearcat, bracket, cabaret, wetback. | |
-3 letters: abater, backer, carate, karate, racket, retack, tacker. | |
-4 letters: aback, abate, acerb, aceta, areca, awake, aware, baker, brace, bract, brake, break, caber, carat, caret, carte, cater, crake, crate, creak, kabar, karat, kebar, rabat, react, reata, recta, taber, taker, tawer, trace, track, tweak, wacke, waker, water, wrack, wreak, wreck. | |
-5 letters: abet, acre, acta, arak, area, back, bake, bare, bark, bate, beak, bear, beat, beck, beta, brae, brat, braw, brew, cake, carb, care, cark, cart, cate, crab, craw, crew, kart, kata, kbar, kerb, race, rack, rake, rate, reck, tace, tack, taka, take, tare, teak, tear, trek, twae, wack, wake, ware, wark, wart, weak, wear, weka, wert. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-b-c-e-k-r-t-w" | |
+1 letter: backwaters, blackwater. | |
+2 letters: blackwaters. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)42 61 63 6B 77 61 74 65 72 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
|
| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
|
| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
|
Morse Code (1836) (references)-... .- -.-. -.- .--. .- - . .-. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01110111 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)B a c k w a t e r |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0042 0061 0063 006B 0077 0061 0074 0065 0072 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
|
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)366769778967867184 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Quotations: Non-fiction 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Derivations 11. Rhymes 12. Anagrams | 13. Orthography 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
