Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A seedy, rundown hotel or other lodging place.
  • noun An animal considered inferior or in poor condition.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun slang A bed or sleeping bag.
  • noun slang A place of shabby lodging, particularly a filthy hotel or run-down apartment.
  • noun slang An unkempt mammal.
  • noun slang A mammal whom the speaker dislikes.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a run-down hotel

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

flea +‎ bag.

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Examples

  • -- No Country for Old Men and In the Valley of Elah shared several cast members and also the fact that at least half of both movies were set in fleabag motels.

    Some observations about movies I've recently watched trinfaneb 2008

  • Other realities of the job, he said, were "being broke, spending massive amounts of time staying in fleabag hotels, and there are aspects of the writing that are just data entry."

    Archive 2006-07-01 2006

  • (Read The Observer's extensive coverage here.) "Save The Hotel" activist Gregory Jones once took issue with my use of the term "fleabag" to describe the dowdy would-be landmark on Seventh Avenue.

    Win Trip To 'Luxurious' Hotel Pennsylvania! 2008

  • (Read The Observer's extensive coverage here.) "Save The Hotel" activist Gregory Jones once took issue with my use of the term "fleabag" to describe the dowdy would-be landmark on Seventh Avenue.

    Win Trip To 'Luxurious' Hotel Pennsylvania! 2008

  • It was the worst kind of fleabag, consisting of twelve units in six free-standing buildings of cinder block from which most of the paint had long ago flaked away.

    Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine 2004

  • It was the worst kind of fleabag, consisting of twelve units in six free-standing buildings of cinder block from which most of the paint had long ago flaked away.

    Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine 2004

  • In 1969, he said, he had dinner with Lillian Hellman at the Carlyle, and she chastised him for staying at a "fleabag" hotel in New York and told him to check in.

    Warren Beatty Shampoos the Sleazy 90's 1998

  • More recently, in Canada at least, it is associated with cheap and dirty accommodation (such as fleabag motels and run-down rooming), as well as with prostitution and other disreputable or illegal activities.

    The Big Apple 2009

  • What hotel would rent me a room, even some of the fleabag ones I knew were out there?

    Family Storms 2011

  • But worst of all, she is forced to move back into the fleabag co-op boardinghouse where she lived when she was a student at the University of Texas.

    How Perfect Is That by Sarah Bird: Book summary 2010

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