Word.ws English Dictionary

backwind

backwind verb: to deflect air into the back of a sail or of a vessel.

Verb (1)

backwind (third-person singular simple present backwinds, present participle backwinding, simple past and past participle backwinded)

  1. To deflect air into the back of a sail or of a vessel
    • If a sailing boat's bow is pointing too high into the wind the sails backwind.

Noun

backwind (plural backwinds)

  1. The flow of air so deflected

Verb (2)

backwind (third-person singular simple present backwinds, present participle backwinding, simple past and past participle backwound)

  1. (transitive) To wind backwards.
    • This works because tape packs with equal diameters also have equal circumferences, therefore the distance the tape on each deck travels when backwound from the edit point is the same.1978, Educational & Industrial Television, volume 10, page 138

Forms of backwind

Verb
third-person singular presentbackwinds
present participlebackwinding
past participlebackwinded
pastbackwinded
past participlebackwound
pastbackwound
Noun
pluralbackwinds

Origin of backwind

From back + wind.

Questions about backwind

What does backwind mean?
Backwind means to deflect air into the back of a sail or of a vessel.
What part of speech is backwind?
Backwind can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of backwind?
The past tense of backwind is backwinded.

Words near backwind in the dictionary

  1. backway
  2. backways
  3. backweight
  4. backweights
  5. Backwell
  6. backwind
  7. backwinded
  8. backwinding
  9. backwinds
  10. backwing
  11. backwinged

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: backwind (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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