backshot

English

Etymology

back +‎ shot

Pronunciation

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Adjective

backshot (not comparable)

1. (of a water wheel) Having the water introduced just behind the summit, combining the advantages of breastshot and overshot systems, since the full amount of the potential energy released by the falling water is harnessed as the water descends the back of the wheel.

Verb

backshot

1. simple past and past participle of backshoot

Noun

backshot (plural backshots)

1. (chiefly sports) A shot that sends something backwards, such as a shot that sends the ball behind the player making it.
   • 1930, Harper's Bazaar - Volume 64, page 94:

     "Tommy" Hitchcock, the American ace, most brilliant hitter in the world, halts a ball with a flaying backshot, turning a defense maneuver into a mad offensive drive.

2. A measurement of the azimuth when sighting to an earlier point along a path that is being measured with a compass.
3. A shot in the back.
   • 1848, James M'Henry, The Wilderness, Or, Braddock's Times: A Tale of the West:

     Who knows but they might come and fire a backshot at us, before we could get home; and then the devil take us, if the chance wouldn't be that some of us would'nt get home at all, at all.

   • 1995, Dirk Fletcher, Texas Tart: The Miner's Moll, →ISBN, page 186:

     If anybody tries a backshot, they will be blasted into dust.

4. (photography and cinematography) A shot taken from behind the subject.
   • 1970, Albert Govoni, A Boy Named Cash, page 15:

     If so great a commotion had been stirred up by his demand for a simple old camera backshot, there was no telling what kind of fuss would have resulted from his intention to achieve in his show the pace that distinguishes a good old-fashioned revival meeting!

   • 1978, Alan Sillitoe, Three Plays, page 159:

     Backshot of power station fully working.

   • 1999, Nurjehan Aziz, Floating the Borders: New Contexts in Canadian Criticism, →ISBN, page 111:

     Set in the 1930s in rural Nova Scotia, the film opens, in colour, with a backshot of the filmmaker — all that is evident are her dreads — typing its title and the details of its setting into a laptop computer.

5. (Caribbean, Jamaica, MLE, MTE, slang) A sexual position in which one partner penetrates the other from behind; doggy style.
   • 2001, Donna P. Hope, Inna Di Dancehall: Popular Culture and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica, page 51:

     In fact, one incensed male interviewee told me that Tanya needed a "good backshot inna har belly fi keep har quiet" (a good backshot up inside her abdomen to keep her quiet/calm).

   • 2013, Kelda, Men Under a Microscope, →ISBN, page 57:

     And by the way, it also incites some backshot (a Caribbean term for a well-known sex position) and spanking tendencies during sexual activity for some.

   • 2015, Takerra Allen, Thicker Than Water - Volume 1, →ISBN:

     Yeah bitch! I got a backshot and that shit felt good as hell!

Coordinate terms

• foreshot, midshot
• undershot

Anagrams

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