backstairs

See also: back stairs and back-stairs

English

Alternative forms

• back-stairs

Etymology

back +‎ stairs

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

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Noun

backstairs pl (plural only)

1. A staircase at the rear of a building or one normally only used by servants and tradesmen.
   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Further Account of Glubbdubdrib. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part III (A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdribb, Luggnagg, and Japan), page 111:

     Here I diſcovered the ſecret Cauſes of many great Events that have ſurprized the World, how a Whore can govern the Back-ſtairs, the Back-ſtairs a Council, and the Council a Senate.

   • 1905, Ernest William Hornung, “The Spoils of Sacrilege” in A Thief in the Night, ^[1]

     Other feet were already in the lower flight of the backstairs; but the upper flight was the one for me, and in an instant we were racing along the upper corridor […]

2. An indirect or furtive means of access or intercourse.
   • 1934 March 27, “De Valera Move Hits Dignity Of Governor-General”, in Christian Science Monitor:

     The straight-forward course, they say, would be to proclaim outright, instead of trying to bring it in by the backstairs.

Adjective

backstairs (comparative more backstairs, superlative most backstairs)

1. Secret or furtive.
   • 1770, Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents‎^[2]:

     […] if some peers (I am very sorry they are not as many as they ought to be) set themselves, in the great concern of peers and commons, against a back-stairs influence and clandestine government, then the alarm begins; then the constitution is in danger of being forced into an aristocracy.

   • 1880, George Otto Trevelyan, chapter 8, in The Early History of Charles James Fox‎^[3], London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1881, page 364:

     The danger of the situation was increased by the mischievous conduct of Alderman Townshend, who had been brought down to the House, pale and bandaged from a recent surgical operation, in order to pour forth a diatribe against female caprice and backstairs influence; […]

   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 3, in The Line of Beauty […], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:

     This backstairs visit was all about sex […]

2. Scandalous.

Synonyms

• backstair

Translations

Secret or furtive

• Bulgarian: задкулисен (bg) (zadkulisen)