Meanings
- not comparableRelating to standing passengers, hanging on to a strap or rail provided in a bus or train.
The definitive London commute is from west London to the City in the east, and in his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) George Orwell invoked 'the strap-hanging army that swings eastward in the morning, westward at night, in the carriages of the Underground'.
2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 17
- uncountableThe action of hanging on to a strap or rail on public transport.
An important sporting event or historical pageant taxes London's Underground railways to the utmost limit, and strap-hanging is and always will be an everyday occurrence.
1948 January and February, C. R. L. Coles, “The Grouping Era”, in Railway Magazine, page 20
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of strap-hang
Cite this entry
strap-hanging. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/strap-hanging
“strap-hanging.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/strap-hanging. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “strap-hanging,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/strap-hanging.
Source: strap-hanging on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.