backpointers
|back-point-ers|
🇺🇸
/ˈbækˌpɔɪn.tərz/
🇬🇧
/ˈbækˌpɔɪn.təz/
(backpointer)
pointer to previous element/state
Etymology
'backpointer' originates from modern English as a compound of 'back' and 'pointer', where 'back' meant 'rear' and 'pointer' meant 'something that points'.
'back' comes from Old English 'bæc' meaning 'the rear, backwards', while 'pointer' derives from Middle English from Old French/Norman 'pointer' (to point) ultimately traceable to Latin-root verbs related to 'punct-'/'punctare' (to prick or point). The compound 'backpointer' arose in technical English (20th century) within computing and algorithm descriptions.
Initially it literally meant 'something that points back (to a previous place)', but in computing it has become a technical term specifically meaning 'a stored reference used to identify a previous node/state for reconstruction or traversal.'
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
plural of 'backpointer': in computer science, a stored reference that points to a previous node, state, or position (commonly used in dynamic programming and decoding algorithms to recover the predecessor or reconstruct a path).
The Viterbi decoder saved backpointers at each time step so it could reconstruct the most likely state sequence.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Last updated: 2025/12/26 23:02