slum
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /slʌm/
rhymes: -ʌm
Forms: form: slums
Etymology: First attested in 1812. originally slang, in the sense "room", especially "backroom", of unknown origin.
Senses: examples: text: Go to the half built-upon slums behind Battlebridge […] you will find groups of boys […] squatting in the mud, among the rubbish, the broken bricks, the dust-heaps, and the fragments of timber […]
ref: 1855, Charles Dickens, “Gambling”, in Household Words, volume 31:
text: I saw that most of those who were spending from eight to fifteen pounds monthly had the advantage of scholarships. I had before me examples of much simpler living. I came across a fair number of poor students living more humbly than I. One of them was staying in the slums in a room at two shillings a week and living on two pence worth of cocoa and bread per meal from Lockhart's cheap Cocoa Rooms.
ref: 1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter xvi
text: Another place where, from the aesthetic point of view, a long tunnel would have been a real blessing, is East London as viewed from the carriage window on the old Great Eastern line. Despite a vast change from crowded slums to tracts of wasteland, due to its grim wartime experience, this approach still provides a shabby and unworthy introduction to the great capital.
ref: 1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 703:
text: Pearson's London was what we now call central London, and much of it was slums. Today most of us wouldn't say no to a pied à terre in Clerkenwell, but in 1850 it was a slum. Drury Lane? A slum. Seven Dials and Covent Garden? Holborn and Finsbury? Slums.
ref: 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 16:
glosses: A dilapidated neighborhood where many people live in a state of poverty.
examples: text: The lower the price of slum the better it is for the operator who can either give more of it out or build up the size of his big prizes. It is the big prizes that bring the play, even though the winner has to be satisfied with a piece of slum for his efforts.
ref: 1956, Theron Fox, How to Make Money with Carnival Games, page 58:
text: Another hanky pank is the darts and balloons. No gaffs, no grift, nothing phoney. Game for the kids and the family. Get a dozen gross of slum and pass it out to the kids, and everybody'll love you.
ref: 1976, Mary Carey, George Sherman, A compendium of bunk: or, How to spot a con artist:
text: Making twenty times his investment in only seconds, the concessionaire smiled as he awarded the nickel slum, often a stuffed worm, to each unwitting pigeon.
ref: 2009, Richard Margittay, Carnival Games: the Perfect Crimes, →ISBN:
glosses: Inexpensive trinkets awarded as prizes in a carnival game.
Synonyms: word: barrio
word: bad part of town
word: estate
word: favela
word: ghetto
word: Hell's Kitchen
word: jects
word: projects
word: scheme
word: shantytown
word: sink estate
word: slum
Hypernyms: word: section of a town
Hyponyms: word: Hooverville
word: rookery
Meronyms: word: building
word: flophouse
word: doss-house
word: tenement
word: street
Derived terms: slum cannon
slumdog
slumdom
slum dweller
slumdweller
slum gully
slumland
slumlike
slumlord
slummer
slummification
slummy
slum-ridden
Related terms: word: inner city
word: urban blight