[f. CANVAS sb. + BACK sb.1]
1. A back of a garment made of canvas; hence fig. a reverse much inferior to the front.
1605. Lond. Prodigal, III. i. 243. My father in a mocado coat a pair of red satin sleeves and a canvas back.
1668. Child, Disc. Trade (ed. 4), 10. Many … would not go to the price of a whole satten doublet; the embroiderer made many hundreds of them … with canvas backs.
a. 1734. North, Exam., I. ii. ¶ 83. I thought it reasonable to bid Defiance to this bold Traducer, and turning him round, shew his Canvas Back.
2. A North American duck (Fuligula valisneriana), so called from the color of the back feathers. Called also more fully Canvas-back duck, and Canvas-backed duck.
1803. J. M. Simmes, in New-York Evening Post, 18 Jan., 3/1. Mr. Rutledge…, who desired me to get the canvass backs which I promised to procure for him.
a. 1813. A. Wilson, Foresters (1818), 51.
| The far-famed canvass-backs at once we know, | |
| Their broad flat bodies wrapt in pencilled snow. |
1832. Blackw. Mag., May, 846/2. The canvass-back stands alone. Ibid. The man who has feasted on canvass-back ducks, cannot philosophically be said to have lived in vain.
1859. Helps, Friends in C., Ser. II. I. i. 20. He had never tasted a canvas-back duck.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes (1850), 79/1. The water in both was blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks.
