Talk:backside

For years, I thought "backside" to be an odd term for the buttocks, because, while the "back" part makes sense, what sense can we make of "side"? The buttocks are completely at the rear. There is no "side" to them. Recently, I read of an early reference to a man's "backsides". Now it made sense. The original word must have been "backsides", which refers to the two cheeks of the bottom, which are quite plausibly "sides". Somewhere along the line, what was a plural became a singular term, and we ended up with the nonsensical "backside", in which only buttock is represented, while the other has disappeared. 210.1.198.109 06:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The "backside" is simply the "side at the back", the "verso". It has nothing to with left and right. It's "backside" as in the opposite of "frontside". It's no different from calling the buttocks the "rear" or the "behind". These are just euphemisms in which a more precise specification of the area is avoided. 90.186.170.236 14:03, 17 April 2019 (UTC)