backslum

B3A1C3K5S1L1U1M3

noun

A slum; the poor and disreputable portion of a town.

Scrabble 18

Meanings

nounbackslum (plural backslums)

plural backslums

  1. A slum; the poor and disreputable portion of a town.

    It is now about the foulest specimen extant of that kind of backslum or alley where, a generation back, according to Hood, pigs and Irish were wont to rally.

    1875, Henry Sampson, A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times, page 392
    1 more example

    He was wrong there, for around the second next corner they ran into quite a different sort of landscape; a jumbled up place of city residences and back slums[.]

    1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 30

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

backslum. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backslum

MLA

“backslum.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backslum. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “backslum,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backslum.

Source: backslum on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.