Word.ws English Dictionary

back-breaking

back-breaking is the alternative form of backbreaking.

Meaning of backbreaking

Adjective

backbreaking (comparative more backbreaking, superlative most backbreaking)

  1. (figuratively) Of work, very physically tiring.
    • A few keen enginemen, such as Driver Rosewarne of York, could coax good work out of them when engaged in heavy East Coast express service, but to most footplate crews, especially firemen, they were rather heartbreaking and backbreaking machines, and gradually were relegated to secondary or fast...1949 May and June, R. A. H. Weight, “A Short-Lived Pacific Class”, in Railway Magazine, page 196

Forms of back-breaking

comparativemore back-breaking
superlativemost back-breaking

Questions about back-breaking

What is back-breaking the alternative form of?
Back-breaking is the alternative form of backbreaking.

Words near back-breaking in the dictionary

  1. back-bitten
  2. back-block
  3. back-blocks
  4. back-bone
  5. back-bones
  6. back-breaking
  7. back-build
  8. back-building
  9. back-builds
  10. back-built
  11. back-burn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back-breaking (page history and authors); backbreaking (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “back-breaking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back-breaking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.