back room

American  

Or backroom

noun

• back rooms
  plural

1. a room located in the rear, especially one used only by certain people.

2. a place where powerful or influential persons, especially politicians, meet to plan secretly or from which they exercise control in an indirect manner.

   The candidate for mayor was chosen in the precincts' back rooms.

---

back room British  

noun

1. 1. a place where research or planning is done, esp secret research in wartime

   2. ( as modifier )

      back-room boys

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• back rooms
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of back room

First recorded in 1585–95

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

back room

The family lived in a back room of the establishment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026

Gavin Vaughan, Scotland's chief analyst and a long-time part of Townsend's back room, is reportedly joining the club, external as head of recruitment at the end of the Six Nations.

From BBC ● Feb. 13, 2026

Hunched over a laptop in the back room, another soldier admits that "victory" in this war looks very different these days.

From BBC ● Feb. 4, 2026

“Gehry says his urge to reinvent order was born in the back room of his grandfather’s hardware store in downtown Toronto,” Leon Whiteson wrote in The Times in 1989.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2025

He found the scale, filled with stubbed-out cigar butts, in the back room.

From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---