backstreet

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See also: back street

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From back +‎ street.

Adjective

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backstreet (comparative more backstreet, superlative most backstreet)

  1. Associated with neighborhoods on back streets, often in older neighborhoods, with poorer residents.
    • 1949, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 18, in The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, page 94:
      The agency was given to some deserving politician who, as he knew nothing at all about Indians and spoke no language except traces of back-street American, would not be prejudiced in Indian affairs and interfere with the highly informed traders.
    • 1983, “Uptown Girl”, in Billy Joel (music), An Innocent Man:
      She's been living in her uptown world / I bet she's never had a backstreet guy / I bet her momma never told her why
    • 1989, Carol Shields, “Times of Sickness and Health”, in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, published 2004, page 349:
      They made these things for almost nothing, cutting them out of remnants they scrambled for in backstreet fabric outlets.
  2. (figuratively) Done in poor and unsanitary conditions, secretly and illegally; back-alley.
    • 1965 June 15, Renée Short, Hansard:
      The results of self-induced and backstreet abortions come to our hospitals for the damage to be put right.

Further reading

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Noun

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backstreet (plural backstreets)

  1. Alternative spelling of back street