backstreet

See also: back street

English

Alternative forms

• back-street

Etymology

From back +‎ street.

Adjective

backstreet (comparative more backstreet, superlative most backstreet)

1. Associated with neighborhoods on back streets, often in older neighborhoods, with poorer residents.
   • 1949, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 18, in The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, page 94:

     The agency was given to some deserving politician who, as he knew nothing at all about Indians and spoke no language except traces of back-street American, would not be prejudiced in Indian affairs and interfere with the highly informed traders.

   • 1983, “Uptown Girl”, in Billy Joel (music), An Innocent Man:

     She's been living in her uptown world / I bet she's never had a backstreet guy / I bet her momma never told her why

   • 1989, Carol Shields, “Times of Sickness and Health”, in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, published 2004, page 349:

     They made these things for almost nothing, cutting them out of remnants they scrambled for in backstreet fabric outlets.

2. (figuratively) Done in poor and unsanitary conditions, secretly and illegally; back-alley.
   • 1965 June 15, Renée Short, Hansard:

     The results of self-induced and backstreet abortions come to our hospitals for the damage to be put right.

Further reading

• “backstreet abortion”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “backstreet”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “backstreet” (US) / “backstreet” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.

Noun

backstreet (plural backstreets)

1. Alternative spelling of back street