back roomn.
a. A room at the back of a house or other building. Also attributive.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > a building > parts of building > room > types of room by situation > [noun] > room at the back of a house
back-chamber1535
back-drawing-room1535
back-parlour1535
back room1592
back1836
1592 R. Greene Notable Discouery of Coosenage (new ed.) sig. E4 The flax-wife..conueyd them into a back room.
1679 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises I. vii. 133 If your Shop stand in an eminent Street, the Front Rooms are commonly more Airy than the Back Rooms.
1713 R. Steele in Guardian 18 June 2/2 The young Poets are in the back Room.
a1777 S. Foote Cozeners (1778) iii. i. 66 And, as you see he is violent, let him have the back room, with the barr'd windows, up two pair of stairs.
1841 Punch 24 July 13/2 Paddy Green intends shortly to remove to a three-pair back-room in Little Wild-street.
1904 Daily Chron. 17 Dec. 6/4 Little Miss Lazarus or Solomon can generally be relied upon to look after..the little back-room home.
b. spec. A room where (esp. secret) research is carried out. Also in extended uses. Applied attributively to one who works or wields influence ‘behind the scenes’. So backroom boy (colloquial), a person engaged in (secret) research.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > hiding, concealing from view > privacy > [adjective] > out of public view
behind-scene1841
behind the scenes1841
offstage1904
back room1941
backstage1950
the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > hiding, concealing from view > privacy > [noun] > less prominent position > place for research
back room1941
the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > hiding, concealing from view > privacy > [noun] > less prominent position > place for research > worker in
backroom boy1941
1941 Ld. Beaverbrook in Listener 27 Mar. 443/1 Now who is responsible for this work of development on which so much depends? To whom must the praise be given? To the boys in the back rooms. They do not sit in the limelight. But they are the men who do the work. Many of them are Civil Servants.
1943 N. Balchin (title) The Small Back Room.
1943 Punch 11 Nov. 422 (caption) He's one of those obscure back-room boys who have lately been so much in the limelight.
1944 Times 9 Aug. 2/3 The man most responsible for the development of the rocket projectile..is Group Captain John D'Arcy Bakercarr,..whose ‘backroom boys’ at the Ministry of Aircraft Production have worked unremittingly with him.
1945 News Chron. 17 May 1/1 Considerable numbers of backroom Nazis, such as bankers and industrialists, have been arrested.
1951 D. N. Chester Lessons Brit. War Econ. ii. 15 No group of back-room boys writing memoranda embodying ideal policies is likely to have much influence.
1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 20 June 337/3 It occurred to boys working in back rooms that if only neutrons could be released in the process a chain-reaction might be set up.
1959 Oxf. Univ. Gaz. 1 May 995/1 The staff..could not take on additional services to readers without increasing the arrears of essential cataloguing and other back-room work.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online September 2021).
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