"Behind" versus "In back of"

[Particles the Greek]

Do you have a preference? For me it's always "behind".

[Ziz]

I only say "behind." I might've heard "in back of" before, but it sounds like crappy English to me. Apparently it was coined in analogy with "in front of," which of course is perfectly standard, but "in back of" sounds about as bad as "mines" does for "mine" (cf. yours, his, hers, etc.).

[Dewrad]

Yes. "Behind." On account of "in back of" being totally ungrammatical. "At the back of" is fine, but I have never encountered "in back of" in any medium whatsoever. Where is this current?

[Salmoneus]

I could imagine as an 'abbreviation' of 'in THE back of' - 'in back of the shop', for instance, to maybe mean the part farthest from the door, or perhaps in the backrooms of the shop. But as a synonym for 'behind'? I'm almost as puzzled as Dew.

[Zaarin]

I've heard "in back of," mostly in the American South, but it always makes me cringe.

[vtardif]

What little I can find suggests it's either generally Southern US English or specifically African-American Vernacular English. Hm, I wonder why it stands out as "crappy" or "cringe"-worthy to a crowd that usually rejects simple prescriptivism.

[Zaarin]

What little I can find suggests it's either generally Southern US English or specifically African-American Vernacular English. Hm, I wonder why it stands out as "crappy" or "cringe"-worthy to a crowd that usually rejects simple prescriptivism.

I'll freely admit that Southern American English generally makes me cringe. Not because it's wrong but because I find it unpleasant sounding.

[clawgrip]

I've heard it before and I dislike it, even though given the existence of "in front of", there's little basis to complain. Watch hockey and you'll probably hear about the puck going in back of the net.

[Hakaku]

I use both, though I wouldn't use "in back of" in a paper. "In back of" also doesn't fully overlap with "at the back of" and not at all with "in the back of", as "in back of the car" specifically means behind the car, while "at the back of the car" and "in the back of the car" both refer to the inside back of the car to me. (Though, in other instances, in back of and at the back of share the same meaning.) For reference, I speak Eastern Ontarian English.

If you search online, you'll find the expression used on a considerable number of news sites, even reputable ones like the BBC. You'll also find an entry on it in a number of dictionaries (typically labelled as "American" or "North American"), including Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, Macmillan Dictionary, Wiktionary, Collins American English Dictionary, Oxford US English dictionary, etc. So I wouldn't consider it to be "ungrammatical" or even remotely limited to Southern American English. In fact, it may have once been a British expression that fell out of use there, but remained in use in North America.

Usage note
55. Although some object to their use, the phrases in back of and the shorter—and much older— back of with the meaning “behind” are fully established as standard in American English: The car was parked (in) back of the house. Both phrases occur in all types of speech and writing.

Standard British English no longer uses the phrasal prepositions "back of" and "in back of," but Canadian English preserves both.

Also, the use of the phrase 'in back of' as a variant for 'behind' was common in British English.

Here are some expressions currently used in the US that were once well known in Britain but have long since gone out of use there: son of a gun, I guess, in back of (for behind).

Certain influence of French may be ascribed to a relatively high use of the Americanism in back of (i.e. behind) in Montreal, in comparison to Ontario where its use is not half as high (Orkin 1970: 155). Orkin proposes that Montrealers borrow this expression from bilingual French Canadians who employ it in place of en arrière de, which is its literal translation. (source)

[Kereb]

"in back of" is still heard here (British Columbia) from time to time. I know I've used it, and I'm certain I got that from my Dad's family whose English is a bit more Oldschool BC than more recent arrivals to the area (ie, fucking everybody). But it doesn't overlap totally with "behind". I'm not entirely sure where the boundaries lie though ... and regarding the puzzlement on the part of those who haven't heard it used, "in back of the shop" could refer to the back rooms of the shop but it could also refer to (say) the alleyway behind the building. Although in such a case you could also say "out back of the shop". Barbaric, I know.

[linguoboy]

In Chicago, there's even a neighbourhood known as Back of the Yards because it was located on the far side of the Union Stock Yards southwest of downtown.