backlash
verbEtymology From back- + lash.
1
To perform a backlash, to lash back in reaction to some cause.
- 1894 William Westall. Tinkler. Ludgate Illustrated Magazine. Vol VIII Thrutch factory was a queer old concern. It had been built piecemeal-here a bit and there a bit. There were a new end and an old end, the spinning-rooms in the one being light and lofty, in the other low. and gloomy. Looms were shoved in everywhere. There were a "long shop" with three hundred, a "top shop" with a hundred, a "back shop" with fifty-three, and a "little shop" with fifteen. Never was its equal for gearing. Shafts were everywhere inside and out, overground and underground, climbing snake-like up the walls, and boring into the roofs; spurwheels, great and small, whirled, clashed and "backlashed" all over the place.
- Just as it began to get dusk and the shadows from the trees deepening the twilight that had already spread over the lake, giving a peculiarly lonesome effect that water always has upon the approach of night, Uncle succeeded in getting out the longest cast he had yet made — about seventy-five feet. Unfortunately, or perhaps I should say fortunately, his reel over-ran and backlashed for him. Patiently he set about untangling his line; I resting the oars and holding the boat stationary.1895 W. C. Kepler. Uncle and the Bass The American Angler - Volume 25 - Page 226
3 more examples
- 1909 La Compagnie Générale Transatlantique v. Hayes. (Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. March 16, 1909.) No. 205. There was testimony that but for the orders of these men, or one of them, the case would have been properly backlashed before being lowered into the hold and that the anxiety of the foreman to get the cargo in quickly induced him to order this case sent down without being properly safeguarded.
- May 2, 1922, locomotive 2469 , Hornell, N. Y. Screw reverse gear backlashed due to latch spring too weak to hold it in place ; 1 injured1922 Interstate Commerce Commission. Fifth Annual Report. Chief Inspector of Locomotive Boilers. Annual Report of the Chief Inspector. Bureau of Locomotive Inspection. To the Interstate Commerce Commission
- I have the faculty of getting more backlashed in less casts with more kinds of guaranteed anti-backlash reels than any man who reads this sad confession. I am letter-perfect at it. Yet I do sometimes catch fish.1936 Gifford Pinchot. Two's Company. The Rotarian April 1936