Word.ws English Dictionary

spillback

spillback noun: the blockage of an intersection by traffic as a result of the traffic lights changing and preventing progress.

Noun

spillback (countable and uncountable, plural spillbacks)

  1. The blockage of an intersection by traffic as a result of the traffic lights changing and preventing progress.
  2. The spread of an infectious pathogen from humans to non-human animals.

Forms of spillback

pluralspillbacks

Origin of spillback

From spill + back.

Questions about spillback

What does spillback mean?
Spillback means the blockage of an intersection by traffic as a result of the traffic lights changing and preventing progress.
What part of speech is spillback?
Spillback is a noun.
What is the plural of spillback?
The plural of spillback is spillbacks.

Words near spillback in the dictionary

  1. Spillane
  2. Spillanean
  3. Spillanes
  4. Spillanesque
  5. Spillanian
  6. spillback
  7. spillbacks
  8. spilled
  9. spilled ink
  10. spilled juice
  11. spilled one's guts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spillback (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:

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