backbone

A sausage-and-pepper meal starter eliminates most of the chopping; canned tomatoes provide the sauce’s backbone; and a few spoonfuls of prepared sun-dried tomato pesto pull everything into focus.

From Salon ● Aug. 25, 2026

It wasn’t accidental how the Appalachian Trail became my family’s backbone.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2026

While Gervais's cringeworthy character David Brent provided many of the belly laughs, the ever-present Dawn and her love interest Tim Canterbury, played by Martin Freeman, gave the show its emotional backbone.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

Van der Meer called offshore oil production “the backbone of the international business” and predicted a sharp decline in fracking production within a decade.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026

Crick had tried to stabilize the “wobbly unstable chains” by putting the phosphate backbone in the center.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

For decades, palaeontologists believed that the largest ocean predators were vertebrates with backbones such as fish and reptiles while invertebrates like octopuses and squid played supporting roles.

From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2026

“If you look at the collection of companies that ultimately formed Lumen, the underlying technologies and backbones were never integrated,” he said.

From MarketWatch ● Mar. 16, 2026

Scientists at the University of St Andrews have identified an important missing piece in understanding how animals with backbones first evolved.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 4, 2026

Animals without a backbones evolved first, around 700 million years ago.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

Metaphors like those about celestial campfires or galactic backbones were eventually replaced in most human cultures by another idea; The powerful beings in the sky were promoted to gods.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan