Meaning

(idiomatic) A very remote time or place..

Definitions by Sense

1. (idiomatic) A very remote time or place.
2. (idiomatic) An uneducated person from a remote area.
3. (dated, informal) An area in the body of a car behind the rearseat, such as the back of a station wagon, storage well in a VW bug, etc.
4. (poetic, nonstandard) Alternative form of way back.

Example Sentences

Those who live in the “waybacks” should have better roads.

Films and radio have penetrated to the waybacks of New Zealand and to the Pacific Islands.

For the first time since beginning his macabre descent into the wayback, Eddie had no compulsion to follow his past.

...another on the sell-by date in the wayback where a living one looks out at maple elm and ash

There were also rumors of a lost love, a common Helium-3 miner who'd since disappeared somewhere in the wayback.

I saw fat men or boys, lean, awkward, baldheaded, asthmatic, rheumatic, waybacks and the last editions of the nursery, blowing at that light, when along would come some stray, solemn detachment of the human telegraph line, give a puff, clasp Liberty abover her head and whirl off in the full confidence that in time he would elope with the whole female kindergarden.^([sic])

The farmers are not the class of thickheads and mossbacks and waybacks which the Government imagine them to be.

Unfortunately those who worked so hard for the fund did not realise the real needs of the waybacks or indeed of some settlers who are not considered waybacks.

Word Forms

• waybacks

Related Words

When Should You Use Way back?

Use way back when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

Practice This Word

Frequently Asked Questions