Blowback (Noun)
Meaning 1
The backward escape of gases and unburned gunpowder after a gun is fired.
Classification
Nouns denoting natural events.
Examples
- The shotgun's recoil and blowback were significant enough to require the use of a shock-absorbing stock.
- Gas-operated firearms rely on blowback to cycle the action and eject spent cartridges.
- The combat rifle's design would have been more efficient without the need to counterbalance the blowback of each shot.
- Firing an old, poorly maintained pistol resulted in severe blowback that wounded the shooter's face.
- Due to the gun's design flaw, excessive blowback of hot gases often damaged the user's hands in close-quarters combat.
Synonyms
Hypernyms
Hyponyms
Meaning 2
Misinformation resulting from the recirculation into the source country of disinformation previously planted abroad by that country's intelligence service.
Classification
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents.
Examples
- The government was unprepared for the blowback that occurred when the false reports it had spread to disparage its enemy were picked up by its own news outlets and broadcast as fact to its own citizens.
- After years of spreading propaganda abroad, the agency faced a wave of blowback at home, as many of the false reports it had created came full circle and were reported by domestic news outlets.
- The intelligence agency had not anticipated the blowback from Operation Spinx, which was intended to deceive a foreign power but ultimately misled its own country's citizens instead.
- The leak of classified documents revealed a massive blowback effect, in which a foreign government was able to counter an intelligence agency's maneuvers by recirculating its own disinformation to the source country's citizens.
- Years after its efforts to shape foreign opinion through disinformation, the agency faced a surge of blowback, as many of the false stories it had created reappeared in the source country's own media.