back and fill

English

Verb

back and fill (third-person singular simple present backs and fills, present participle backing and filling, simple past and past participle backed and filled)

  1. (nautical) To manage the sails of a ship so that the wind strikes them alternately in front and behind, in order to keep the ship in the middle of a river or channel while the current or tide carries the vessel against the wind.
    • 1840, R[ichard] H[enry] D[ana], Jr., Two Years before the Mast. […] (Harper’s Family Library; no. CVI), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers […], →OCLC:
      We brought the other end to the capstan, and hove in upon it until we came to the slip-rope, which we took to the windlass, and walked her up to her chain, the captain helping her by backing and filling the sails.
    • 1923, F. Hopkinson Smith, The Arm-chair at the Inn, Chapter 10:
      There were no bells in the engine hold and the signals were passed by word of mouth from the man at the wheel. Backing and filling by turns the desired position was finally secured and I heard the rasping roar of the chain cable as the descending anchor ran it out through the hawse hole.
  2. (nautical) This term needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.
  3. (figurative) To take opposite positions alternately; to flip-flop
    • 1911, A. M. Chisholm, The Boss of Wind River:
      Joe found McDowell a vast improvement upon Hagel. Where the latter had backed and filled and referred to his directors, McDowell, to whom responsibility was as the breath of life, decided instantly.

Quotations

1823, [James Fenimore Cooper], The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna; […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), New York, N.Y.: Charles Wiley;  […], →OCLC:
"Ay! I have seen the boy before," said Benjamin, who wanted little encouragement to speak; "he has been backing and filling in the wake of Natty Bumppo, through the mountains, after deer, like a Dutch long-boat in tow of an Albany sloop. […] "

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “back and fill”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

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