adverb
- on the back or shoulders: The little girl rode piggyback on her father.
adjective
- astride the back or shoulders: a piggyback ride.
- sharing commercial time, space, etc.: piggyback advertising.
- carryable or attachable: a piggyback turbine unit.
- added or tacked on; supplementary: a piggyback clause.
- 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)
- to attach or ally to as or as if a part of the same thing: to piggyback human rights agreements with foreign aid.
- to carry (somebody) on the back or shoulders.
- to carry (truck trailers) by railroad on flatcars.
- Radio and Television Slang. to advertise (two or more products) in the same commercial.
verb (used without object)
- to be transported aboard or atop another carrier: The space shuttle piggybacked on the airplane.
- to use, appropriate, or exploit the availability, services, or facilities of another: private clinics piggybacking on federal health-care facilities.
- to carry truck trailers by railroad on flatcars.
noun
- a house trailer designed to fit over a pickup truck.
- a truck trailer carried on a flatcar.
- anything that operates in connection with or as part of another.
noun
- a ride on the back and shoulders of another person
- 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
- on the back and shoulders of another person
- on or as an addition to something else
adjective
- of or for a piggybacka piggyback ride; piggyback lorry trains
- of or relating to a type of heart transplant in which the transplanted heart functions in conjunction with the patient’s own heart
verb (tr)
- to give (a person) a piggyback on one’s back and shoulders
- to transport (one vehicle) on another
- (intr often foll by on) to exploit an existing resource, system, or product
- (tr) to attach to or mount on (an existing piece of equipment or system)
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.