Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A squalid district inhabited chiefly by derelicts and vagrants.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An especially
dilapidated section of acity , characterized by run-down or abandoned buildings,alcoholism andhomelessness , andvices such as drug dealing andprostitution . - noun A colloquial designation of a
run-down district ofLos Angeles .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a city district frequented by vagrants and alcoholics and addicts
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Alteration of skid road (from the fact that it once referred to a downtown area frequented by loggers).]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Probably from skid road ("a road along which logs were skidded"), transferred to the streets of towns where loggers had recreation on their time off.
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Examples
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dinkum commented on the word skid row
WORD: Skid Row
DEFINITION: A de facto concentration camp where the down-and-out, the downtrodden, and the dispossessed are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions. (As described by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1973 novel "Breakfast of Champions." An homage, perhaps, a grave yet gallant tipping of his hat to the American poet Emma Lazarus and her promise of a "New Colossus", a promise which remains sorrowfully elusive --- unfulfilled ---in these latter day, modern times).
EXAMPLE, from Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions:
' The nickname for Bunny's neighborhood was Skid Row. Every American town of any size had a neighborhood with the same nickname: Skid Row. It was a place where people who didn't have any friends or relatives or property or usefulness or ambition were supposed to go.
' People like that would be treated with disgust in other neighborhoods, and policemen would keep them moving. They were as easy to move, usually, as toy balloons.
' And they would drift hither and yon, like balloons filled with some gas slightly heavier than air, until they came to rest in Skid Row, against the foundations of the old Fairchild Hotel.
' They could snooze and mumble to each other all day long. They could beg. They could get drunk. The basic scheme was this one: they were to stay there and not bother anybody anywhere else---until they were murdered for thrills, or until they were frozen to death by the wintertime.
' Kilgore Trout wrote a story one time about a town which decided to tell derelicts where they were and what was about to happen to them by putting up actual street signs like this:
' ==SKID ROW== '
--- 1973. KURT VONNEGUT. Breakfast of Champions, or, Goodbye Blue Monday. Chapter 17 (Pages 183 - 184).
February 20, 2014