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say it: BA-kwaw-tur
backwater is a noun meaning "a body of water that was created by a flood or tide or by being held or forced back by a dam". It carries 2 recorded senses.
a body of water that was created by a flood or tide or by being held or forced back by a dam
“the bayous and backwaters are breeding grounds for mosquitos”
a place or condition in which no development or progress is occurring
“the country is an economic backwater”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for backwater come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.