Word.ws English Dictionary

back scratcher

back scratcher is the alternative spelling of backscratcher.

Meaning of backscratcher

Noun

backscratcher (plural backscratchers)

  1. A long slender rod with a rake-like device on one end, sometimes in the form of a human hand, designed to let a person scratch their own back.
  2. (figuratively, uncommon) A participant in corruption, such as a briber or pay-to-play participant.
    • Pierre-Gilles had made a name for himself, but also wanted to give credit to his collaborators, whom he was always careful to cite in lectures, to the point that, for a joke, Daniel Saint-James and his colleague Gobalakichena Sarma created a "backscratchers club" named the 'Société de la brosse à...2011, Laurence Plévert, “Team Leader”, in Pierre-Gilles de Gennes: A Life in Science, World Scientific, →ISBN, pages 119-120

Forms of back scratcher

pluralback scratchers

Questions about back scratcher

What is back scratcher the alternative spelling of?
Back scratcher is the alternative spelling of backscratcher.

Words near back scratcher in the dictionary

  1. back run
  2. back scatter
  3. back scattered
  4. back scattering
  5. back scatters
  6. back scratcher
  7. back scratchers
  8. back scrubber
  9. back scrubbers
  10. back seat
  11. back seats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back scratcher (page history and authors); backscratcher (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 scratcher.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_scratcher. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.