grey-back, greyback
(ˈgreɪbæk)
1. U.S. colloq. A Confederate soldier in the American Civil War.
| 1864 Daily Tel. 7 July 3/4 The last thing he is likely to attempt is to send a solitary grayback or an army of gray-backs beyond the mountains. 1870 T. W. Higginson Army Life vi. 152 Yonder loitering gray-back leading his horse to water. 1883 Daily Tel. 9 Feb. 5/4 The Confederate armies, during the great Civil War in America..were known..as ‘greybacks’. |
2. U.S. (See quot.) Cf. greenback.
| 1897 Gen. H. Porter in Century Mag. Aug. 593 The depreciation in the purchasing power of graybacks, as we call the rebel treasury notes, is so rapid. |
3. dial. and U.S. colloq. A louse.
| 1864 Daily Tel. 17 Mar. 5/2 The darkies sat grinning and hunting in their rags for greybacks. 1864 Sala ibid. 22 Apr. 5/2 The attire of the Secesh partisans is..infested..by an insect sportively termed a ‘greyback’. 1877 Holderness Gloss. |
4. A name of various birds. a. The Hooded Crow, Corvus cornix. Also greyback crow. b. U.S. The North American Knot, Trigla canutus. c. dial. and U.S. The scaup duck, Fuligula marila.
| 1888 G. Trumbull Bird-names 55 Another title at Chicago is gray-back, and certain gunners about Detroit prefer black-neck to..‘blue-bill’. 1891 Atkinson Moorland Par. 325 Once a grayback crow came. 1893 Newton Dict. Birds, Greyback, in England a common name of the Grey form of Crow, Corvus cornix; but in North America applied by gunners to the Knot. 1895 East Angl. Gloss., Grey-backs, scaup ducks. |
5. U.S. The grey whale (see grey a. 8 b).
| 1884–5 Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) V. 186 The gray whale has received many curious titles, such as ‘hard-head’, ‘mussel-digger’, ‘devil-fish’, and ‘gray-back’. |
6. techn. (See quot. Cf. grey n. 1 b.)
| 1876 J. Paton in Encycl. Brit. IV. 685/2 Between the central bowl [of a cylinder calico-printing machine] and the cloth to be printed there passes an endless band of cloth or blanket..and a ‘grey back’ or web of unbleached calico, used to keep the blanket clean. |