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.

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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

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• back rooms
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of back room

First recorded in 1585–95

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

back room

“I think it’s easy to believe that reviews don’t matter,” James says while signing 300 copies in a tiny back room at Powell’s before his talk.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

They met at his penthouse in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, at a private back room in a bar in North Beach and at the W Hotel in Los Angeles, she writes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026

"It means fewer orders," says one trader over tea in a back room office.

From BBC ● Apr. 22, 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

On a brisk spring evening not long ago, two dozen men and women gathered in the back room of a Manhattan bar to engage in a peculiar ritual known as speed-dating.

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

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