View synonyms for back-alley

back-alley

[ bak-al-ee ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

adjective

dirty, unprepossessing, sordid, or clandestine:
back-alley morals; back-alley political schemes.

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An Americanism dating back to 1860–65

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see under back street .

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I never want to return to the days of gruesome back-alley abortions.

And it happened with this modern-day back alley butcher in Philadelphia.

Just around the corner from stores like Chanel, Valentino, and Hermès—not exactly a back alley.

The execrable back alley was conducted on the pig-sty basis.

Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the back alley dying.

How slatternly the old back alley fence would look now that the parking system is adopted by neighbors.

Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with blood upon his beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back alley.

A man may live in the back alley of life or on the boulevard, according to the dictates of the spirit.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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