Definitions

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who is no longer popular

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • What you quote, however, about your own frame of mind is obviously a back-number….

    The Secret Life of Houdini William Kalush 2006

  • What you quote, however, about your own frame of mind is obviously a back-number….

    The Secret Life of Houdini William Kalush 2006

  • So I went further, pointing out that the Yenbo-Medina sector also became a back-number; and advised the transfer to Akaba of the stores, money, and officers now devoted to Ali and Abdulla.

    Seven Pillars of Wisdom Thomas Edward 2003

  • Two or three years since, to quote him was, in the opinion of a _Standard_ reviewer, to write yourself down a back-number, as they say.

    Browning's Heroines Ethel Colburn Mayne

  • Revolutions in the various sciences have been going on so rapidly, they fancy that a theory that was formulated forty years ago must be a back-number, and so they hasten to declare their allegiance to the last new cloud of sophistry, purporting to be a theory of value, that has been evolved by the feeble minds of the anarchists of Italy or the capitalist economists of Austria.

    Socialism: Positive and Negative Robert Rives La Monte

  • He smiled wanly and asked for his mail, which consisted only of a pile of back-number copies of a newspaper.

    Land of the Burnt Thigh Edith Eudora Kohl

  • For the man who lay in front of me, stone dead in water-soaked clothes that were frozen to his stark body, was Thompson, our old superintendent, who only six weeks ago had left the La Chance mine; whose letter to Dudley, with its careful, back-number copperplate address, lay in my pocket now.

    The La Chance Mine Mystery Susan Morrow Jones

  • After the last game you may be carried off on the shoulders of enthusiastic admirers and dined and wined by hosts of friends; but across the field there is a grim faced coach who may already be scheming out a play for next year which will snatch you back from the "Hall of Fame" and make your friends describe you sadly as a "back-number."

    Football Days Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball William Hanford Edwards

  • It was written in Thompson's careful, back-number copperplate, perhaps not so careful as usual, but his unmistakably.

    The La Chance Mine Mystery Susan Morrow Jones

  • There were three for Marcia, and one -- in old Thompson's back-number copperplate -- for Dudley.

    The La Chance Mine Mystery Susan Morrow Jones

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