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Definition 2024


flophouse

flophouse

English

Bunks in a flophouse, circa 1890.

Alternative forms

  • flop-house

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:[1]
      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).
    • 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin 2006, p. 34:
      He was born out back of a twopenny flophouse in what the wags called “The Holy Land” […].

Synonyms

Translations

Related terms

  • lodging house
  • workingmen's hotel

References

  1. 1 2 flophouse” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2001).