Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A means by which actions, especially in government and diplomacy, are carried out secretly rather than through regular avenues of communication.
Wiktionary
- n. The smaller of two channels in a river that diverge to form an island
- n. An unofficial communications channel used to make informal or subversive negotiations
- n. linguistics A gesture or short prompt by which a listener invites a speaker to continue.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an alternative to the regular channels of communication that is used when agreements must be made secretly (especially in diplomacy or government)
Examples
“It is equally important that you create a permanent but confidential back channel between yourself and Marulanda to manage the many coming crises and to prepare for and secure the implementation of confidence-building measures.”
“Rice established a back channel to Dov Weissglas, Sharons chief of staff and close friend, which she used to good practical effect to goad Israel.”
“Kissinger employed a secret back channel with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and negotiated there many of the key arms control issues.”
“And it was followed in September by another agreementalso completed through the back channel by Kissinger and Ambassador Kenneth Rushon the perennial Cold War issue of the two Germanys and the status of West Berlin.”
“Petraeus, for instance, had a back channel to O’Sullivan, to whom he could not have been more clear about his need for a significantly larger force just before he was about to assume command in Iraq.”
“Similarly, Odierno had a back channel to both Keane and Petraeus, and Keane had a back channel to Vice President Cheney.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘back channel’.
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back phrases/hyphens/compounds
backache to backyard
back-ache, back-aching, back-acter, back-acting, back-answer, back-bar, back-basket, back beat, back-bias, back-blast, back-blowing, back-boiler and 342 more...
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AFET - diplomacy
broker a peace ac..., client state, deadlocked peace ..., embassy, freeze, goodwill ambassador, hinterland, interfere in dome..., intervene personally, maintain technica..., mediation, no business as usual and 670 more...
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Front and Back
backchat, backbone, backpack, backhoe, backfire, backhanded, breakfront, beachfront, drawback, effrontery, frontier, switchback and 196 more...
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new words
faulty parallelism, antebellum, lucubrate, retronym, asyndeton, polysyndeton, chiasmus, laconic, dysphemism, zeugma, subpoena, dialectic and 130 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for back channel.
bojan Back channel support: the feedback that listeners give to speakers, by verbal expressions like mmm, uhuh, yeah, and by nodding, frowning or other facial and body gestures. Aug 23, 2011