greenback
greenback noun: any bill that is legal tender in the US (originally printed with green and black ink) issued by the Federal Reserve.
Noun
greenback (plural greenbacks)
- Any bill that is legal tender in the US (originally printed with green and black ink) issued by the Federal Reserve.
- The United States dollar.
- A unit of American currency issued during the Civil War by the Treasury Department.
- A wave that has not yet begun to break.
- When the surfer has passed the point where the waves are breaking, and is among the waves which are known as “greenbacks”, he may either dive through them or float over them, […]1965, John Bloomfield, Know-how in the Surf, page 28
Forms of greenback
| plural | greenbacks |
|---|
Origin of greenback
From green + back.
Words formed from greenback
- green-backed
- Greenbacker
- greenbackism
- Greenback Party
- greenmail
- greenmailing
Questions about greenback
- What does greenback mean?
- Greenback means any bill that is legal tender in the US (originally printed with green and black ink) issued by the Federal Reserve.
- What part of speech is greenback?
- Greenback is a noun.
- What is the plural of greenback?
- The plural of greenback is greenbacks.
Words near greenback in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: greenback (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-greenback.wav.
Cite this entry: “greenback.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/greenback. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.