back number
[back a. 3 b, number n. 6.]
A number of a magazine, periodical, etc., earlier than the current one; hence colloq. (orig. U.S.), one who or a thing which is behind the times, out of date, or useless.
| 1812 Niles' Reg. I. 392/2 To reprint certain back numbers of the register. 1851 Mayhew London Lab. I. 308/2 The sum expended annually in the streets for back numbers of periodicals amounts to upwards of {pstlg}700. 1882 G. W. Peck Peck's Sunshine 153 Some old back number of a girl who has no fellow who wants to go. 1890 Harper's Mag. Feb. 439/2 Whereas if Galen should appear among us to-day,..he would be told he was a back number. 1907 Westm. Gaz. 4 Dec. 2/3 There are now so many competing forms of transport..that the steamboat seems to be doomed to be what is in current terminology called a ‘back number’. 1924 Galsworthy White Monkey i. iv. 27 Lady Alison..finding a certain poignancy in contact with the New Age, on Fleur's copper floor. On that floor she almost felt a back number. 1945 ‘G. Orwell’ Animal Farm 36 Snowball had made a close study of some back numbers of the Farmer and Stockbreeder. 1961 Times 18 May 5/3 A veteran who..has already proved that he is no back-number. |
| attrib. 1902 Kipling Traffics & Discov. (1904) 12 These old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines. |