Word.ws English Dictionary

backward-looking

backward-looking adjective: not progressive; concerned with the past rather than the present or future.

Adjective

backward-looking (not comparable)

  1. Not progressive; concerned with the past rather than the present or future.
    • [I]t is interesting to note that Sengupta includes over 120 similar out-of-date terms from the days of the Raj and before, thus revealing the extent to which the glossary is, in a sense, backward-looking, which is inconsistent with the fact that it is meant to be a supplement of a dictionary of...2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 302

Words formed from backward-looking

Questions about backward-looking

What does backward-looking mean?
Backward-looking means not progressive; concerned with the past rather than the present or future.
What part of speech is backward-looking?
Backward-looking is an adjective.

Words near backward-looking in the dictionary

  1. backward roll
  2. backward rolls
  3. backward slash
  4. backward slashes
  5. backward-compatible
  6. backward-looking
  7. backward-lookingness
  8. backward-rationalize
  9. backward-rationalized
  10. backward-rationalizes
  11. backward-rationalizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: backward-looking (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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