Meanings
slab city1
plural slab cities
- UShistoricalAn area surrounding a sawmill in American frontier times, where slabs of cut wood were stored or discarded.
Slab City2
- A community in Imperial County, California, United States.
Outside of the gentrification of the Scrabble set, Slab City begins to resemble the post-apocalypse for which it is known—ramshackle RVs, heaped tyres, gutted cars and the yaps and howls of skinny dogs.
2003 March 23, Sanjiv Bhattacharya, “Land of the free”, in The Observer, →ISSN, archived from the original on 20 Jun 2017Synonyms: The Slabs
Synonyms & antonyms
proper nounA community in Imperial County, California, United States.
Origin
(California): From the concrete slabs that remained after the WWII-era Camp Dunlap was torn down.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
slab city. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/slab%20city
“slab city.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/slab%20city. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “slab city,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/slab%20city.
Source: slab city on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.