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[pig-ee-bak] /ˈpɪg iˌbæk/

adverb
1.
on the back or shoulders:
The little girl rode piggyback on her father.
adjective
2.
astride the back or shoulders:
a piggyback ride.
3.
sharing commercial time, space, etc.:
piggyback advertising.
4.
carryable or attachable:
a piggyback turbine unit.
5.
added or tacked on; supplementary:
a piggyback clause.
6.
noting or pertaining to the carrying of one vehicle or the like by another, as the carrying of loaded truck trailers on flatcars.
verb (used with object)
7.
to attach or ally to as or as if a part of the same thing:
to piggyback human rights agreements with foreign aid.
8.
to carry (somebody) on the back or shoulders.
9.
to carry (truck trailers) by railroad on flatcars.
10.
Radio and Television Slang. to advertise (two or more products) in the same commercial.
verb (used without object)
11.
to be transported aboard or atop another carrier:
The space shuttle piggybacked on the airplane.
12.
to use, appropriate, or exploit the availability, services, or facilities of another:
private clinics piggybacking on federal health-care facilities.
13.
to carry truck trailers by railroad on flatcars.
noun
14.
a house trailer designed to fit over a pickup truck.
15.
a truck trailer carried on a flatcar.
16.
anything that operates in connection with or as part of another.
/ˈpɪɡɪˌbæk/
noun
1.
a ride on the back and shoulders of another person
2.
a system whereby a vehicle, aircraft, etc, is transported for part of its journey on another vehicle, such as a flat railway wagon, another aircraft, etc
adverb
3.
on the back and shoulders of another person
4.
on or as an addition to something else
adjective
5.
of or for a piggyback: a piggyback ride, piggyback lorry trains
6.
of or relating to a type of heart transplant in which the transplanted heart functions in conjunction with the patient’s own heart
verb (transitive)
7.
to give (a person) a piggyback on one’s back and shoulders
8.
to transport (one vehicle) on another
9.
(intransitive) often foll by on. to exploit an existing resource, system, or product
10.
(transitive) to attach to or mount on (an existing piece of equipment or system)
noun

an unauthorized tapping into another’s connection with a public utility
Examples

Clandestine use of a neighbor’s wireless Internet connection is an increasingly prevalent example of piggybacking.
Usage Note

computing
adj.

1823, probably a folk etymology alteration of pick pack (1560s), which perhaps is from pick, a dialectal variant of pitch (v.1). As a verb from 1952.

noun

The transport of loaded containers or semitrailers on railroad flatcars (1953+)

verb

To originate or prosper with the help of something else: Aerobic dancing piggybacked on the jogging craze (1968+)

[fr the term for carrying someone, esp a child, on one’s back, derived by folk etymology fr pick-a-back, of unknown origin]

1. A method for passing acknowledgement frames and data frames in the same direction along a line.
2. The practice of increasing memory capacity by soldering chips on top of other chips. The chip-enable or high address pins would be connected to the address bus by a flying lead. Many Ohio Superboards were expanded to a massive 8K of RAM in this way.
(1994-11-29)