backcheck

B3A1C3K5C3H4E1C3K5

verb

To check (an opposing player) while skating toward or near one's own goal.

“That was a great backcheck, Gordie.”

Scrabble 28

Meanings

verbbackcheck (third-person singular simple present backchecks, present participle backchecking, simple past and past participle backchecked)

present singular third person backchecks · participle present backchecking · participle past backchecked · past backchecked

  1. transitivehobbiesTo check (an opposing player) while skating toward or near one's own goal.

    Any time you've got a guy who can score 63 goals, let him, and find someone else to backcheck.

    1984, Walter Gretzky, Charles Taylor, Jim Taylor, Gretzky : from the Back Yard Rink to the Stanley Cup, page 128
  2. intransitivehobbiesTo engage in checking while skating toward or near one's own goal.

    It’s been a real team effort, a commitment to defense and backchecking by everybody.

    2007 March 26, Lynn Zinser, “Rangers Stay Cool in Another Pressure-Filled Win”, in New York Times
    1 more example

    2004, Bruce Driver, Clare Wharton, The Baffled Parent's Guide to Coaching Youth Hockey, page 81: A smart defensive player knows when to backcheck the puck carrier and when to backcheck to cover an open player. Hockey has no greater test of your heart and intensity than your willingness to backcheck, particularly at the end of a sustained attack when the other team has suddenly come up with the puck and you are feeling exhausted.

    1994, Jack Falla, Hockey: Learn to Play the Modern Way, page 134
  3. quality controlTo check someone else's work after they have completed it, in a backward-looking type of review or audit, especially one that runs on a backchannel workflow in parallel with the main workflow (and thus is not a rate-determining or throughput-bottlenecking step).
nounbackcheck (plural backchecks)

plural backchecks

  1. The act of backchecking.

    That was a great backcheck, Gordie.

    1 more example

    Please backcheck a sample of Sunita's work on the Farthington project.

Origin

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

backcheck. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backcheck

MLA

“backcheck.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backcheck. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “backcheck,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backcheck.

Source: backcheck on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.