Definitions

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

  • noun The tenderest part of a loin of beef, pork, or similar cut of meat.
  • noun A city district notorious for vice and graft.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That part of the loin of beef which is tenderer than the rest, in consequence of the softness or fineness of the muscular fiber; the psoas muscle of the ox and some other animals used as meat; the fillet; the undercut.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A strip of tender flesh on either side of the vertebral column under the short ribs, in the hind quarter of beef and pork. It consists of the psoas muscles.
  • noun In New York City, the region which is the center of the night life of fashionable amusement, including the majority of the theaters, etc., centering on Broadway. The term orig. designates the old twenty-ninth police precinct, in this region, which afforded the police great opportunities for profit through conniving at vice and lawbreaking, one captain being reported to have said on being transferred there that whereas he had been eating chuck steak he would now eat tenderlion. Hence, in some other cities, a district largely devoted to night amusement, or, sometimes, to vice.

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

  • noun The tenderest part of a loin of meat, especially of pork or beef

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

  • noun the tender meat of the loin muscle on each side of the vertebral column
  • noun a city district known for its vice and high crime rate

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Sense 2, after the Tenderloin, an area of New York City (from the easy income it once afforded corrupt policemen).]

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Examples

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  • San Francisco's calling us, the Giants and Mets will play

    Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?

    We hung about the stadium, we've got no place to stay

    We hung about the tenderloin and tenderly you tell

    About the saddest book you ever read

    that always makes you cry

    The statue's crying too and well he may.

    (Piazza, New York catcher, by Belle and Sebastian)

    August 30, 2008

  • An abomination located in San Francisco.

    October 23, 2008

  • District in San Francisco where the cops got such lucrative bribes they could afford steak for every meal. (via NPR's Says You)

    January 17, 2010