flophouse

English

Bunks in a flophouse, circa 1890.

Alternative forms

• flop-house

Etymology

From flop +‎ house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈflɒphaʊs/

• Audio (AU)

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Noun

flophouse (plural flophouses)

1. (US, slang) A cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms. [from 20th c.]
   • 1904, McClure’s Magazine, November 1904:

     In one of [Cincinnati’s] slum districts stands the Silver Moon, a “flop house” (i.e., a house where the occupants are “flopped” out of their hanging bunks by letting down the ropes).

   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC:

     We even visited some drunken seamen in a flophouse on Mission Street that she knew; they offered us whisky.

   • 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 34:

     He was born out back of a twopenny flophouse in what the wags called “The Holy Land” […].

Synonyms

• doss-house
• flop

Hypernyms

• house

Related terms

• lodging house
• workingmen's hotel

Translations

cheap hotel — see doss-house

Verb

flophouse (third-person singular simple present flophouses, present participle flophousing, simple past and past participle flophoused)

1. To stay in a flophouse.
   • 1941, James F. Waters, The Court of Missing Heirs, page 53:

     August was aware of Robert's strange quirk of flophousing away from home and that he often spent weekends at the Diana.

   • 1960, Alan Kapelner, All the naked heroes: a novel, page 337:

     I kept going nowhere, bummed the country, boxcar'd it, breadlined it, flophoused it, that cruddy dying by inches in jungles when, Christ-o, outa the knocked-out black and blue I'm told I gotta go to war, gotta fight for freedom.

   • 1989, S. Prideaux, Fine Arts, page 202:

     For old time's sake we plan to flophouse with you over the parturient period.