yellowback
Americannoun
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(formerly) an inexpensive, often lurid, novel bound in yellow cloth or paper.
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a gold certificate.
Etymology
Origin of yellowback
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Having first taken one twenty dollar yellowback from the well-padded book, he slipped it and the cigarcase into the inner coat pocket of the dead man.
From Brand Blotters by Rowe, Clarence H. (Clarence Herbert)
Why, he'd give this one or that one a yellowback to buy a new hat, say,—and then the others would tease for new hats.
From In the Onyx Lobby by Wells, Carolyn
He tossed a yellowback bill lightly into her lap, and she made a great show of rejecting it, even pushing it toward him across the table and to the floor.
From Every Soul Hath Its Song by Hurst, Fannie
You saw what that fellow flashed, a twenty dollar yellowback, a word to Skippy and the Kennedy would follow.
From Skippy Bedelle His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete Man of the World by Fuhr, Ernest
In literature we have to differentiate what is purely a commercial product like the yellowback novel, what is educational like the classic, and what is of the new.
From A Tramp's Sketches by Graham, Stephen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
