Throwback

How to spell throwback

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce throwback

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does throwback mean?

1. nounA person, thing, or style that strongly recalls an earlier time or an older type.
2. nounA retro-styled item, especially a sports kit, made to look like one from an earlier season or decade.

Throwback in a sentence

• The diner's neon signs make it a real throwback to the 1950s.

• The team wore a green throwback for the anniversary match.

• His polite letter-writing habit is a charming throwback to a slower age.

• Collectors pay high prices for an original throwback jersey.

Where does throwback come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Throwback is a transparent English compound built from the everyday verb throw and the word back, and its history is best read as the joining of two native Anglo-Saxon words rather than a borrowing. Throw descends from the Old English thrawan, which originally meant to twist or turn and only later settled into the modern sense of hurling something through the air, while back comes from the Old English bæc, meaning the rear or a return to a former position. The compound first appears in the later nineteenth century as a term in animal and plant breeding, where a throwback was an individual that reverted to a characteristic of an earlier ancestor, as if nature had thrown the trait back into the line. From that biological sense it broadened into general use for anything that recalls or revives an earlier era, such as old styles, designs, or attitudes. Because both halves are common words spelled exactly as they sound, the only real spelling decision is remembering to write it as one solid word rather than two.

How the word is built

• throw (Old English thrawan: to twist, hurl)
• back (Old English bæc: rear, return)