skid row

[ roh ]

noun

1. an area of cheap barrooms and run-down hotels, frequented by alcoholics and vagrants.

skid row

/ rəʊ /

noun

1. slang.
   a dilapidated section of a city inhabited by vagrants, etc

Word History and Origins

Origin of skid row¹

1930–35, Americanism; earlier skid road an area of a town frequented by loggers, originally a skidway

Idioms and Phrases

A squalid district inhabited by derelicts and vagrants; also, a life of impoverished dissipation. For example, That part of town is our skid row , or His drinking was getting so bad we thought he was headed for skid row . This expression originated in the lumber industry, where it signified a road or track made of logs laid crosswise over which logs were slid. Around 1900 the name Skid Road was used for the part of a town frequented by loggers, which had many bars and brothels, and by the 1930s the variant skid row , with its current meaning, came into use.

Example Sentences

Downtown L.A. was basically just Skid Row back then, and we closed it down to shoot that shootout sequence.

From The Daily Beast

I did think you had to end up on skid row if you were an alcoholic.

From The Daily Beast

But today Skid Row is in the news—for all the wrong reasons.

From The Daily Beast

Today Skid Row resembles a Third World tent city teeming with sleeping bags, shopping carts, and people with nowhere else to go.

From The Daily Beast

The remaining 18 presumably “had contact with the patients in Skid Row,” said Fielding.

From The Daily Beast

One morning, he wakes up on Skid Row without a nickel in his jeans and the great-granddaddy of all hangovers.

From Project Gutenberg

One nostalgic hood from Seattle said it reminded him of Skid Row there.

From Project Gutenberg