backtrail
backtrail noun: a small path or trail that is not used regularly.
Noun
backtrail (plural backtrails)
- A small path or trail that is not used regularly.
- The path of renunciation has many sideroads. It is all the more tragic that the radiant Christina Light becomes so benighted in defeat as to pursue moral backtrails out of a bored self-abandon.1975, Dale E. Peterson, The clement vision: poetic realism in Turgenev and James, page 100
- The path over which one has already traveled.
- They waited there for some five minutes when, suddenly, on the backtrail, perhaps a half mile or more behind them, there were three flashes, sudden and bright, one after the other, brilliant in the cold, pure air.2009, John Norman, The King, page 306
- When it was light enough we climbed a mesa, winding around the far side before coming up to watch our backtrail.2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 41
Verb
backtrail (third-person singular simple present backtrails, present participle backtrailing, simple past and past participle backtrailed)
Forms of backtrail
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | backtrails |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | backtrails |
| present participle | backtrailing |
| past participle | backtrailed |
| past | backtrailed |
Origin of backtrail
From back + trail.
Questions about backtrail
- What does backtrail mean?
- Backtrail means a small path or trail that is not used regularly.
- What part of speech is backtrail?
- Backtrail can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of backtrail?
- The plural of backtrail is backtrails.
Words near backtrail in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: backtrail (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:
Cite this entry: “backtrail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/backtrail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.