Definition of "backstep"

backstep

noun
plural backsteps
1. A step backwards
  Quotations
  There are also times when a player needs to enlist the aid of the backstep while on the baseline.
  1985, Rick Elstein, Mary Carillo Bowden, Rick Elstein's Tennis Kinetics: With Martina Navratilova, page 130
  The attacker steps across his body and places his right foot on the mat. As he does this, the attacker uses his left hand to pull on his opponent's right sleeve and uses his left hand to start his backstep.
  2012, Steve Scott, Winning on the Mat
2. (geology) An abrupt subsidence or change in deposition preserved in the sedimentary record due to a marine transgression.
3. (fluid mechanics) Flow over a backward-facing step.
4. The process of going back and finishing a specification that was incomplete at the start of a process, once enough progress has been made to know the full details.
  Quotations
  With care it is possible to combine a median-of-three mechanism with partitioning that avoids backstep initialization.
  1989, R. G. Dromey, Program derivation, page 562
5. A platform at the rear of a firetruck where a firefighter can stand.
  Quotations
  Then, when I was a backstep firefighter in the early 1960s, a fire occurred in an old vacant movie theater on my day off.
  2010, Vincent Dunn, Collapse of Burning Buildings, 2nd Edition, page 303
  Note the mirror next to the rear warning lights that allows the driver to view the backstep area of the apparatus.
  2013, Federal emergency Management Agency, U.S. Fire Administration, Safe Operation of Fire Tankers, page 92
verb
third-person singular simple present backsteps, present participle backstepping, simple past and past participle backstepped
1. To take a step backwards
2. To return to a previous place or time.
3. To retract or take back.
  Quotations
  Tony's smile departed his face and sadness became him. Pete began to backstep his words. He was filled with remorse over what he had asked the Corporal and was quick to reassure Tony that she was there, waiting.
  2013, Dennis Baker, Restless Hearts
4. To be arranged in steps going backwards.
  Quotations
  Le Vau is responsible for the jutting central core, while the wings that backstep so elegantly were designed Hardouin-Mansart.
  2001, Giovanna Magi, All Paris, page 122
5. (geology, of a shoreline) To recede in an abrupt fashion due to marine transgression.
  Quotations
  As seen elsewhere in the North Sea, transgression continued in the Late Jurassic, causing shorelines to backstep, with coeval deposition of the Heno Formation clastics and Lola Formation claystones.
  2009, Kw Glennie, Petroleum Geology of the North Sea: Basic Concepts and Recent Advances
  In some localities the bank margins of several cycles are stacked above each other[sic], in other places they backstep or prograde relative to each other.
  1992, R.H Workum, A.S. Hedinger, Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 2509, page 41
6. To finish a specification that was initially incomplete once enough progress has been made to know all the details.
  Quotations
  Robust adaptive backstepping control algorithms are developed for state feedback tracking of a class of uncertain dynamic nonlinear systems preceded by unknown dead-zone nonlinearities, in the presence of bounded external disturbances.
  2008, Jing Zhou, Changyun Wen, Adaptive Backstepping Control of Uncertain Systems, page 165