The noun backstabbing denotes the action or practice of attacking, or acting against, someone in a treacherous or underhand manner.
—Cf. also the noun frontstabbing.
The adjective backstabbing means: that engages in treacherous or underhand behaviour.
The verb backstab (someone) means: to attack, or act against, (someone) in a treacherous or underhand manner.
The noun backstabbing occurs, for example, in the following from The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Monday 15th January 2024 [page 3, column 5]:
Bercow joins ‘backstabbing’ on US version of The Traitors
Vivian Ho
When he was the House of Commons speaker, John Bercow developed a combative reputation and after his tenure he was found to be a “serial bully” and a liar. But now, as he makes his reality TV debut, he is seeking to use his political experience to unleash chaos.
“I’m a retired politician,” the former speaker said in the season premiere of the US version of The Traitors. “Backstabbing, deception are all part and parcel of the political life.”
The earliest occurrences of the adjective backstabbing the I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From The Three Brothers: A Romance (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1803 [misdated 1808]), by the British-Army officer and author Joshua Pickersgill (1780-1818) [Vol. II, page 118]—here, backstabbing is probably used literally in reference to physically attacking someone:
The sun rose high and still he was in suspense. About this time his guards were changed […]. Those who replaced them were less reserved, and very loquacious; but of haggard appearances and of ferocious tempers. Creatures, ’twixt whom and brutes, the human form is the only difference: who next to bloody craft distinguish noisy humour, and derive their jests from the points of their stilettos: such are your back-stabbing wretches.
2-: From The Political Primer; Or, Road to Public Honours (London: Henry Colburn, 1826) [page 34]:
Young men of good talents and amiable dispositions set out in life with the belief that the greater part of the vice, fraud, and base conduct complained of by their elders, is produced by their own harshness, asperity, and injustice; and that if there were no hard masters, or oppressors, there would be few lying, slandering, fawning, back-stabbing dependants.
3-: From The Boatswain and the Devil. A True Story, a poem by ‘Anti-Humbug’, published in The Watchman (London, England) of Sunday 30th March 1828 [Vol. II, No. 56, page 27, column 3]:
“I like your cool, back-stabbing, pious knaves;
Not those who murder when the blood is warm.”
4-: From Codlin’s the Friend—not Short!, published in the Maidstone Gazette and Kentish Courier (Maidstone, Kent, England) of Tuesday 14th June 1842 [No. 2315, page 4, column 4]:
The Gazette (an avowed free-trader) has been the only organ of the county press which has endeavoured to get the farmer fair-play, or to defend him from the back-stabbing assistance of his friends.
The earliest occurrence of the verb backstab that I have found is from the column Odd Fellow’s Journal. Conducted by a Brother, published in The Penny Sunday Chronicle (London, England) of Sunday 11th September 1842 [No. 94, page 1, column 5]:
The Treasurer of the Prince Albert.—We have heard much talk of this individual, and all agree that he is a decided acquisition to the Order; under those circumstances, we wish every success to his house, and his lodge shall have our earnest support. We warn him, however, not to let his ear be poisoned by the slander of certain scamps, who can only speak ill of a man behind his back. Above all, we would have him beware of wretches who dare not meet their antagonist face to face, but, writhing beneath the tongue of truth when charged in a public lodge with their deceit and villany [sic], take the opportunity of privately back-stabbing their more honourable accuser.
The earliest occurrence of the noun backstabbing that I have found is from The Court Gazette (London, England) of Saturday 24th December 1842 [No. 254, page 1696, column 2]:
We again draw the reader’s attention to a most unfair attack on the Bishop of Llandaff, made really by the Editor of the Times, but ostensibly under the mask of a correspondent. […] How is the serious charge of refusing to perform the sacrament brought against the ecclesiastical functionaries of the metropolitan cathedral, and denied by them, by the vergers, and by the Bishop of Llandaff, sustained? By a correspondent of the Times, who signs himself, suspiciously, “Presbyter;” whose name is not given to the public, but, as alleged, given privately to the Editor of the Times. “Presbyter,” we presume a Presbyterian, on being pressed, states that he derived the accusation from a dissenting clergyman, but that the said dissenting clergyman had it on the evidence of clergymen of the Church of England. Is this anonymous and circuitous transfer of evidence sufficient ground for bringing a serious charge of unchristian neglect of duty against Christian functionaries, who meet the charge in their own names. Let the accusing parties stand forward in their own names. If the charge be true, it is a public duty to expose the serious dereliction of duty it involves. If untrue, it is the duty of public opinion to inflict on the offender’s head, by way of example, as well as retribution, the punishment of calumnious back-stabbing, cloaked under the cowardly domino of an anonymous bravo, and not the less despicable and detestable because defeated in its aim of intended assassination.
word histories 