yellowback

[ yel-oh-bak ]

noun

1. (formerly) an inexpensive, often lurid, novel bound in yellow cloth or paper.
2. a gold certificate.

Word History and Origins

Origin of yellowback¹

First recorded in 1790–1800; yellow + back ¹

Example Sentences

Why, he'd give this one or that one a yellowback to buy a new hat, say,—and then the others would tease for new hats.

From Project Gutenberg

Tyler Spotswood, in his early 405, can still sourly remember the Washington childhood he spent "in a yellowback walk-up apartmenthouse off a stagnant tree-choked street, with a preachy bookish father who was always broke and a sweet mother with trailing sleeves and a goody-goody kid brother who was a hopeless sap."

From Time Magazine Archive

Malaeska; The Indian Wife of the White Hunter came out in the yellowback that was to become the trademark of infamy to U.S. parents.

From Time Magazine Archive

Say, he looks at that yellowback as longin' as an East Side kid sizin' up a fruit cart.

From Project Gutenberg

Having first taken one twenty dollar yellowback from the well-padded book, he slipped it and the cigarcase into the inner coat pocket of the dead man.

From Project Gutenberg