Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏀 Basketball guards 🎾 Rear court area
backcourt

backcourt

2 4.1
The part at the back of a tennis or badminton court near the baseline
  • noun
  • /ˈbækˌkɔrt/
  • Specialized
: fondo de la cancha
  • She positioned herself in the backcourt to receive the serve and return it effectively.

Examples

  • The purpose of the Poole forehand clear test is to evaluate the ability to hit a forehand clear shot from the backcourt.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Purdue showed that it can still attack and has an amazing blocking system up front; they just need to fix the digs in the backcourt, and the wins will start to come again for this team.

    Blog text (31)

  • The net, 3.5 feet high at the posts, divides the court widthwise in half; the service lines divide each half again into backcourt and forecourt.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Look at the rest of his defensive game; even though he's improved, he'd rather take a swipe in the backcourt than speed back to get his man.

    Blog text (22)

  • During the match, the player made an impressive shot from the backcourt to score.

  • The team successfully executed a play that started deep in the backcourt.

Surface Forms

backcourt singular
backcourts plural

Morphology

backcourt = back + court (transparent) = back + court

The sense refers directly to the rear area of a playing court and is straightforwardly derived from 'back' + 'court'.

Etymology

Backcourt is made of back ('rear') and court ('playing area'), so it means the part of a racket court that is furthest from the net, near the back line.