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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mossback

Mossback \Moss"back`\, n. A veteran partisan; one who is so conservative in opinion that he may be likened to a stone or old tree covered with moss. [Political Slang, U.S.]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mossback

"conservative," 1874, especially of poor whites from Carolina, originally (1872) in reference to those who hid out to avoid service in the Confederate army (and would have stayed out till the moss grew on their backs); from moss + back (n.).

Wiktionary
mossback

n. 1 A turtle that, because of its age, has a growth of algae on its back. 2 (context by extension English) A very conservative or reactionary person, especially one with old-fashioned views.

WordNet
mossback

n. an extremely old-fashioned conservative

Usage examples of "mossback".

He was half again as big as any other mossback around and the only one whose sleeping pit was in the Queen Grove.

The fact is I was becoming such a mossback that I had almost stopped reading the papers.

Bear Creek, by golly, if I have to lick every old mossback in the Humbolts.

There were mossbacks in other groves of the farm which had never come out of their sleeping pits or given any indication of being awake since Ilf could remember.

What would your mossbacks say if they found out you kicked their five long ones over to the arm-buster that got you in Dutch to begin with?

I think all the sleepy mossbacks were wide awake at last and realized that their kind of Democracy was tottering and waiting for the last blow.

It looked like the grandaddy of all brookies, a real mossback, dark greenish-blue above and silvery-white below, with pale wiggly markings up around the dorsal fin and blue-ringed yellow and pink spots on the flanks.