backpacking

backpacking is the present participle and gerund of backpack.

Noun

backpacking (uncountable)

Hiking and camping overnight in backcountry with one's gear carried in a backpack.
- The Australian teens, both from Melbourne, were enjoying a backpacking trip when they became ill after a night out in Vang Vieng.
- The picturesque rural town in northern Laos has long been a popular backpacking spot.2024 November 21, Helen Regan, Isaac Yee and Eve Brennan, “Australian teens among six tourists dead as countries warn of suspected methanol poisonings in Laos”, in CNN, archived from the original on...
Low-cost, generally urban, travel with minimal luggage and frugal accommodations.

backpack (third-person singular simple present backpacks, present participle backpacking, simple past and past participle backpacked)

(intransitive) To hike and camp overnight in backcountry with one's gear carried in a backpack.
- I spent a month backpacking in the Rockies.
(intransitive) To engage in low-cost, generally urban, travel with minimal luggage and frugal accommodation.
(rare, transitive) To place or carry (an item or items) in a backpack.
- Astronauts backpack oxygen during spacewalks.

From backpack + -ing.

What does backpacking mean?: Backpacking means hiking and camping overnight in backcountry with one's gear carried in a backpack.
What is backpacking the present participle and gerund of?: Backpacking is the present participle and gerund of backpack.
What part of speech is backpacking?: Backpacking is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: backpacking (page history and authors); backpack (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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