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

Etymology

Origin of back room

First recorded in 1585–95

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

back room

He’s heavier than the largest T. Rex ever unearthed, so huge that his magnificent tusks and skull had to be stored separately, in a back room.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 26, 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

MoonPay, a crypto payments company, held a private dinner in the back room of Torrisi, a chic SoHo restaurant, to celebrate a partnership with Dorsia, an app for restaurant reservations.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

Sensing a business opportunity, Hank escorted us into the back room and grabbed a couple beat-up boxes from a top shelf loaded with similar-looking cardboard refugees.

From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx