Word.ws English Dictionary

back channel

back channel noun: the smaller of two channels in a river that diverge to form an island.

Noun

back channel (plural back channels)

  1. The smaller of two channels in a river that diverge to form an island.
  2. A secondary channel of activity, typically in parallel with primary channels and somewhat independent of them.
  3. An unofficial communications channel used to make informal or subversive negotiations.
  4. A real-time online discussion that occurs simultaneously with a verbal presentation.
    • TodaysMeet visualizes collaborative and parallel conversations in a backchannel through a digital classroom where every student has a voice.2017, Di Zou, James Lambert, “Feedback methods for student voice in the digital age”, in British Journal of Educational Technology, volume 48, number 5, page 1083
  5. A gesture or short prompt by which a listener invites a speaker to continue.

Forms of back channel

pluralback channels

Questions about back channel

What does back channel mean?
Back channel means the smaller of two channels in a river that diverge to form an island.
What part of speech is back channel?
Back channel is a noun.
What is the plural of back channel?
The plural of back channel is back channels.

Words near back channel in the dictionary

  1. back butters
  2. back catalog
  3. back catalogs
  4. back catalogue
  5. back catalogues
  6. back channel
  7. back channels
  8. back chat
  9. back chats
  10. back chatted
  11. back chatting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back channel (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-back channel.wav.

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