Word.ws English Dictionary

hairyback

hairyback noun: a gastrotrich.

Noun

hairyback (plural hairybacks)

  1. A gastrotrich.
  2. (South Africa, derogatory, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur) A white Afrikaner.
    • I couldn't care that the ous call me rooinek and sometimes whiterat because of my hair and face. At least I am not a hairyback I tell them.1975, Sheila Roberts, Outside Life's Feast: Short Stories, Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, →ISBN, page 27
    • A mistake which is often made by our South African militants is to assume that we are cleverer than the police, that we can out-manoeuvre the 'hairybacks' and the 'rock spiders'[…]1986, Breyten Breytenbach, The true confessions of an albino terrorist, page 344

Forms of hairyback

pluralhairybacks

Origin of hairyback

From hairy + back.

Questions about hairyback

What does hairyback mean?
Hairyback means a gastrotrich.
What part of speech is hairyback?
Hairyback is a noun.
What is the plural of hairyback?
The plural of hairyback is hairybacks.

Words near hairyback in the dictionary

  1. hairy-eared dwarf lemurs
  2. hairy-soled conyrat
  3. hairy-soled conyrats
  4. hairy-tailed mole
  5. hairy-tailed moles
  6. hairyback
  7. hairybacks
  8. hairyfish
  9. hairyfishes
  10. hairyness
  11. hairytail mole

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hairyback (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: En-au-hairyback.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hairyback.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hairyback. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.