Back (To)

To support with money, influence, or encouragement: as to “back a friend.” A commercial term meaning to endorse. When a merchant backs or endorses a bill, he guarantees its value.

Falstaff says to the Prince:—

“You care not who sees your back. Call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing!”—Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., ii. 4.

“Englishmen will fight now as well as ever they did; and there is ample power to back them.”—W. Robertson: John Bright, chap. xxxi. p. 298.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.