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View synonyms for back number

back number

noun

  1. an out-of-date issue of a serial publication.
  2. Informal. anything out-of-date.


back number

noun

  1. an issue of a newspaper, magazine, etc, that appeared on a previous date
  2. informal.
    a person or thing considered to be old-fashioned
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Word History and Origins

Origin of back number1

An Americanism dating back to 1805–15
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Idioms and Phrases

Dated, out of style. For example, That hat is really a back number , or The game has changed so fast that a player who returns to the circuit after several years' absence usually finds he or she is a back number . This term originally referred to back issues of periodicals, which are no longer newsworthy. [Late 1800s]
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Example Sentences

Richard, a back number of my unsavory career has turned up to deprive me of my appetite and blight my being.

I wish tasteless, conventional, and machine-made architecture were as much of a "back-number" in England as it is here.

He rails at conditions instead of changing them, and eventually he finds himself shelfed and shunned as a back number.

When a man begins shaking his head over the news of the day, he is done for; a back number.

Susan never shakes her head; and it's rather hard on her, I think, to be the wife of a back number.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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