back-pocket

present singular third person back-pockets · participle present back-pocketing · participle past back-pocketed · past back-pocketed · alternative backpocket

1. transitiveTo put (something) into a back pocket.

   “Right.” He back-pocketed the notebook and lifted the Nikon from my bag. “Take a few steps down the hill and point toward the ruins so I can get both in one shot.”

   2003, Robert Eversz, Burning Garbo: A Nina Zero Novel, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, published 2005, →ISBN, page 23

2. idiomatictransitiveTo put (something) aside for future use; to keep in reserve.

   1 more example

   “All the lyrics talk about is humility and heartbreak, and then at the end it’s exuberance and joy,” Hines said. “The only way that fits is if the Caps win the Stanley Cup, so I sort of back-pocketed the idea for years. I put together multiple iterations of it in my head, and it just never panned out, because they never ended up finishing the deal.”

   2019 June 7, Scott Allen, “How Mumford and Sons became the soundtrack for Capitals’ Stanley Cup triumph”, in The Washington Post