Word Finder - backwards

definition

Oriented toward the back.

example

The battleship had three backwards guns at the stern, in addition to the primary complement.

definition

Reversed.

example

The backwards lettering on emergency vehicles makes it possible to read in the rear-view mirror.

definition

Behind current trends or technology.

example

Modern medicine regards the use of leeches as a backwards practice.

definition

Clumsy, inept, or inefficient, especially in learning.

example

He was a very backwards scholar, but he was a marvel on the football field.

From a distance, it looked as if he leapt backwards into the abyss.

Instinct and fury blinded him.  He felt the dagger sink into flesh and struck again, only to find himself flying backwards through the air.  Rhyn shouted something at him, but Kris couldn't hear him, not with the memory of both Lilith and Hannah dying.

It may open either forward or backwards; and although present in the great majority of the species, and enclosing the teats, it may, as in many of the opossums, be completely absent, when the teats extend in two rows along the whole length of the under-surface of the body.

Premolars with compressed crowns, increasing in size from before backwards.

Pouch complete, generally opening backwards.

A nervous system has been shown to exist in many species, and consists of a perioesophageal ring giving off usually six nerves which run forwards and backwards along the lateral and median lines; these are connected by numerous fine, circular threads in the sub-cuticle.

In the latter case the overturning tendency begins as soon as the load leaves the ground, but ceases as soon as the load again touches the ground and thus relieves the crane of the extra weight, whereas overturning backwards is caused either by the reaction of a chain breaking or by excessive counterweight.

Owing to this joint the whole upper beak can be moved up and down with extra facility, according to the shoving forwards or backwards of the palato-pterygo-quadrate apparatus which moves sledge - like upon the cranial basis.

The premaxilla is always unpaired, but each half has three long processes directed backwards; one fuses with the maxillary bone, another helps to form the anterior part of the palate, while the third, together with its fellow, forms the " culmen " and extends backwards to the frontals, or rather to the ethmoid which there crops up on the surface.

The scapula is sabre-shaped, and extends backwards over the ribs, lying almost parallel to the vertebral column.

Forwards it covers, and has driven asunder, the optic lobes; backwards it hides the much shortened medulla oblongata.

It has, therefore, been to some extent superseded by the long-wall method, the upper half being taken at the first working, and removed as completely as possible, working backwards from the boundaries to the shaft.

The test is really a ciliated velum developed in the normal position at the apical pole but reflected backwards in such a way as to cover the original ectoderm except at the posterior end.

To this day I wonder why she took a step backwards on the alter steps by marrying me.

He was conducted from that room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last brought to the doors of the Lodge.

But hardly had he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards beneath him as if it were breathing heavily and jolting.

Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning beams into another yard across the street, while others carried bundles of hay.

Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was walking backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.

In 2004, she launched her own clothing line named ANARES, which is Serena spelled backwards.

He leaned over the seat and began rummaging through his backseat accumulation as the vehicle began to slide backwards.

Each pull upward would require Dean to release his grasp on the line that secured him should he slip and fall backwards!

The black horns, which are ringed in their basal portion, are comparatively short and not unlike those of the Asiatic serows in general characters, being subcylindrical, and curving slightly backwards.

The small pouch, supported by the usual epipubic bones, opens backwards.

This custom, which owes its origin to Henry II., meant a loss of revenue to the lords, whose victory in this matter, however, was a step backwards.

Heterodactyle, first and second toes directed forwards, third and fourth backwards.

Miles made his adventurous journey through Oman, while Theodore Bent threw searchlights backwards into ancient Semitic history by his investigations in the Bahrein Islands in 1888 and in Hadramut in 1894 - 181n northern Asia it is impossible to follow in detail the results of the organized Russian surveys.

To such fields may be added the yet more complicated problems of those reflex waves which flowed backwards from India into the border highlands.

There are thus substantial reasons for believing that the nephridium grows backwards from a funnel as does the coelomoduct.

In both the cavity originally or immediately continuous with the coelom appears first in the funnel and grows backwards.

The final settlement of a " future " settlement contract involved usually a crowd of persons, and the of " differ= passage of large sums of money backwards and for e"ces."

It is navigable by junks between that city and Ninguta, though the torrents in its course make the voyage backwards and forwards one of considerable difficulty.

In Nemertines the everted proboscis is retracted in the same way as the tip of a glove finger would be if it were pulled backwards by a thread situated in the axis and attached to the tip. The comparison may be carried still further.

Here the pits split into two, one part ending in a sac lined with sensory epithelium, and embedded in nervous tissue, the other projecting backwards as a long, glandular, blind canal.

The nervous system is represented by an oesophageal collar and a suboesophageal ganglion, whence paired nerves pass outwards to innervate the anterior extremity and backwards towards its posterior end.

Bloodhounds quest slowly and carefully, and when they lose the scent cast backwards until they recover the original trail and make a fresh attempt to follow it.

The other upper premolars and molars all formed on the same plan and of nearly the same size, with four roots and quadrate crowns, rather wider transversely than from before backwards, each having four columns, connected by a pair of transverse ridges, anterior and posterior.

The upper molars present a characteristic pattern of crown, having a much-developed flat or more or less sinuous outer wall, and two transverse ridges running obliquely inwards and backwards from it, terminating internally in conical eminences or columns, and enclosing a deep valley between.

But the French army was already completely out of hand, and the degree to which the panic of a crowd can master even the strongest instinct of the individual is shown by the conduct of the fugitives who crowded over the bridges, treading hundreds under foot, whilst all the time the river was easily fordable and mounted men rode backwards and forwards across it.

The metropolitan sewage was discharged untreated into the river, and the heavier solids deposited over the river-bed, while the lighter parts flowed backwards and forwards on the tide.

This is due to the fact that there are really two kinds of subtraction, respectively involving counting forwards (complementary addition) and counting backwards (ordinary subtraction); and it suggests that it may be wise not to use the one symbol - to represent the result of both operations until the commutative law for addition has been fully grasped.

From these statements, working backwards, we find successively that v= 5, u = 20, X = 22.

The change appears to begin in the fibrils which lie between the circular muscle fibres of the middle coat of the smaller arterioles and extends both backwards and forwards along the vessels.

The apparatus, after having been carefully cleaned and dried, is charged with pure and dry mercury which must next be worked backwards and forwards between A and B to remove all the air-bells.

Across the arms he balances the iron rod to which the glass bulb adheres, and rolling it backwards and forwards with the fingers of his left hand fashions the glass between the blades of his sugar-tongs tool, grasped in his right hand.

The two workmen face each other and walk backwards.

Unlike sloths, the megatherium has seven cervical vertebrae; and the spines of all the trunk-vertebrae incline backwards.

The nervous system consists of a ring below the suckers and of a large number of radially arranged tracts running forwards and backwards.

In the males the horns are usually compressed and triangular, with transverse ridges or knobs, and either curving backwards or spiral.

From the oviduct a long duct full of yolk passes backwards almost to the hinder end of the body and ends blindly in a globular dilatation just below the skin.

On the north the crag is crowned by a sort of plateau sloping backwards into a round-topped hill.