English

Adjective

backstreet ‎(comparative more backstreet, superlative most backstreet)

1. Associated with neighborhoods on back streets, often in older neighborhoods, with poorer residents.
   • 1949, Sinclair Lewis, The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, Chapter 18, p. 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.

   • 1965, Renée Short, Hansard, 15 June, 1965,

     The results of self-induced and backstreet abortions come to our hospitals for the damage to be put right.

   • 1983, Billy Joel (music), “Uptown Girl”, in 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, 2004, p. 349,

     They made these things for almost nothing, cutting them out of remnants they scrambled for in backstreet fabric outlets.

Noun

backstreet ‎(plural backstreets)

1. Alternative spelling of back street