backtrails

Noun

backtrail (plural backtrails)

1. 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
2. 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

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