Meanings
plural backslums
- 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 3921 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
backslum. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backslum
“backslum.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backslum. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “backslum,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/backslum.
Source: backslum on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.