Word.ws English Dictionary

backshish

backshish is the alternative spelling of baksheesh.

Meaning of baksheesh

Noun

baksheesh (usually uncountable, plural baksheeshes)

  1. (usually) In the Middle East or southwest Asia: a bribe or tip.
    • What an honour to think that I am to be elevated to the throne, and to bring the seat in Parliament as backsheesh to the sultan!1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Temptation”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC, page 265
  2. (slang, usually) A minor wound that necessitates the evacuation of a soldier from the combat zone for medical treatment.
    • When we had made the boys as comfortable as possible and given them fags, of which our Padre seemed to have an inexhaustable^([sic]) supply, they were quite cheerful, and joked about “backsheesh” wounds.1981, The Kia Ora Coo-ee: The Magazine for the ANZACS in the Middle East, 1918, →ISBN

See all 3 meanings of baksheesh

Forms of backshish

Noun
pluralbackshishes
Verb
third-person singular presentbackshishes
present participlebackshishing
past participlebackshished
pastbackshished

Questions about backshish

What is backshish the alternative spelling of?
Backshish is the alternative spelling of baksheesh.

Words near backshish in the dictionary

  1. backshift
  2. backshifted
  3. backshifting
  4. backshifts
  5. backshine
  6. backshish
  7. backshished
  8. backshishes
  9. backshishing
  10. backshoot
  11. backshooter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: backshish (page history and authors); baksheesh (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: “backshish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/backshish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.