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Back up   /bæk əp/   Listen
verb
Back  v. t.  (past & past part. backed; pres. part. backing)  
1.
To get upon the back of; to mount. "I will back him (a horse) straight."
2.
To place or seat upon the back. (R.) "Great Jupiter, upon his eagle backed, Appeared to me."
3.
To drive or force backward; to cause to retreat or recede; as, to back oxen.
4.
To make a back for; to furnish with a back; as, to back books.
5.
To adjoin behind; to be at the back of. "A garden... with a vineyard backed." "The chalk cliffs which back the beach."
6.
To write upon the back of; as, to back a letter; to indorse; as, to back a note or legal document.
7.
To support; to maintain; to second or strengthen by aid or influence; as, to back a friend. "The Parliament would be backed by the people." "Have still found it necessary to back and fortify their laws with rewards and punishments." "The mate backed the captain manfully."
8.
To bet on the success of; as, to back a race horse.
To back an anchor (Naut.), to lay down a small anchor ahead of a large one, the cable of the small one being fastened to the crown of the large one.
To back the field, in horse racing, to bet against a particular horse or horses, that some one of all the other horses, collectively designated "the field", will win.
To back the oars, to row backward with the oars.
To back a rope, to put on a preventer.
To back the sails, to arrange them so as to cause the ship to move astern.
To back up, to support; to sustain; as, to back up one's friends.
To back a warrant (Law), is for a justice of the peace, in the county where the warrant is to be executed, to sign or indorse a warrant, issued in another county, to apprehend an offender.
To back water (Naut.), to reverse the action of the oars, paddles, or propeller, so as to force the boat or ship backward.


back up  v. t.  
1.
To serve as a backup (3) for (another person or persons); as, the patrolmen backed up the detectives as they went inside to make the arrest; the center fielder backed up the shortstop on the play.
2.
(Computers) To make a backup (5) of; as, the sysop backed up the purchasing data files every night.


back up  v. i.  
1.
To move in a reverse direction; used of vehicles or animals.
2.
To accumulate due to a blockage of flow; as, a traffic backup due to an accident; a sewage backup.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Back up" Quotes from Famous Books



... our steps, rolling the stone, as it were, back up the mountain, determined to commit ourselves to the line of marked trees. These we finally reached, and, after exploring the country to the right, saw that bearing to the left was still the order. The ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Ann replied. "And when we jumped into bed, we remembered that we had left Raggedy Andy's arm lying up on the attic floor, so we had to run back up there and get ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... arrest him for it. When they did arrest him afterwards, they had to do it at night in a garden. He could have argued with them as he had often done in the temple, and justified himself both to the Jewish law and to Caesar. And he had physical force at his command to back up his arguments: all that was needed was a speech to rally his followers; and he was not gagged. The reply of the evangelists would have been that all these inquiries are idle, because if Jesus had wished to escape, he could have saved himself ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... or his chums. In addition, his journalistic training had instilled deeply one of the first rules of the profession, accuracy, and to tell the truth he was rather ashamed to go to Colonel Snow with so little evidence to back up his story, and so he determined to "keep tabs," as he called it, on Monkey Rae, and knowing he could handle that young man physically to capture him redhanded and take him in dramatic ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... little run towards the door, but, as Athelney Jones put his broad back up against it, he recognized ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle


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