backpointer
|back-point-er|
🇺🇸
/ˈbækˌpɔɪntər/
🇬🇧
/ˈbækˌpɔɪntə/
pointer to previous element/state
Etymology
'backpointer' originates from modern English as a compound of 'back' and 'pointer', where 'back' comes from Old English 'bæc' meaning 'the rear' or 'back', and 'pointer' derives from Middle English 'poyntour'/'pointer' (from Old French 'pointer') meaning 'one who points'.
'back' evolved from Old English 'bæc' to Middle English 'bak' and then to modern English 'back'. 'pointer' developed from Old French 'pointer' (verb) and Middle English noun forms like 'poyntour' to the modern English noun 'pointer'. The compound 'backpointer' is a relatively recent formation (20th century) coined in computing contexts to name a pointer referring to a previous element or state.
The component words originally meant 'rear' ('back') and 'one who/that points' ('pointer'); combined in modern technical usage they came to mean specifically 'a pointer to a previous element or state', especially in algorithms and data structures.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
in algorithms (especially dynamic programming and the Viterbi algorithm), a stored reference from a state at time t to the previous state at time t-1 that yields the optimal path; used to reconstruct the best sequence after computation.
The Viterbi implementation stores backpointers at each step so we can reconstruct the most likely state sequence.
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Noun 2
in data structures, a pointer that references the previous node or element (for example, the link to the predecessor in a doubly linked list).
In a doubly linked list, each node contains a backpointer to its predecessor.
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Noun 3
more generally, a reference or link that points back to an earlier item (e.g., a document or webpage referencing a prior section or page).
The report included several backpointers to earlier chapters for context.
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Last updated: 2025/12/26 22:48