Word.ws English Dictionary

redback

redback noun: a venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, endemic to Australia.

redback: a venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, endemic to Australia
Image: Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

redback (plural redbacks)

  1. (Australia) A venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, endemic to Australia.
    • “If you find a redback, squash it firmly,” advised one guide.1988 June 16, Stephanie Pain, Things that go plop in the night, New Scientist, page 78
    • Many a red-back, funnel-web, or other spider has found its resting days at the bottom of a vegemite jar shoved into some dark recess of the laundry.1996, James Lambert, The Macquarie Book of Slang, Sydney: Macquarie Library, page 254
    Synonyms:
    redback spider
  2. (US) A brown and white sandpiper (Calidris alpina), native to the Northern Hemisphere; the dunlin.

Noun (2)

redback (plural redbacks)

  1. (slang) the yuan (CNY), the currency of the People's Republic of China (Red Chinese money)

Examples of redback in a sentence

  • Easily identified by a red, orange or brownish stripe on the abdomen, Redbacks are responsible for by far the most spider bites in Australia.2007, Steve Backshall, Steve Backshall's Venom: Poisonous Animals in the Natural World, page 114:
  • The only truly dangerous Australian spiders are funnelwebs and redbacks but, these days, deaths of people from these spiders seem to be a thing of the past since antivenom is now available.2012, Peter Macinnis, Australian Backyard Naturalist, page 55:

Synonyms of redback

  • redback spider

Forms of redback

pluralredbacks
alternative formred-back
alternative formred back

Origin of redback

From red + back.

Modelled after greenback, the currency of the United States of America, except using Communist Red

Questions about redback

What does redback mean?
Redback means a venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, endemic to Australia.
How do you use redback in a sentence?
Easily identified by a red, orange or brownish stripe on the abdomen, Redbacks are responsible for by far the most spider bites in Australia.
What part of speech is redback?
Redback is a noun.
What is the plural of redback?
The plural of redback is redbacks.

Words near redback in the dictionary

  1. redaubs
  2. redazzle
  3. redazzled
  4. redazzles
  5. redazzling
  6. redback
  7. redbacks
  8. redbait
  9. redbaited
  10. redbaiter
  11. redbaiters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: redback (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-redback.ogg.

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