Word.ws English Dictionary

back-street

back-street is the alternative form of backstreet.

Meaning of backstreet

Adjective

backstreet (comparative more backstreet, superlative most backstreet)

  1. Associated with neighborhoods on back streets, often in older neighborhoods, with poorer residents.
    • 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.1949, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 18, in The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, page 94
  2. (figuratively) Done in poor and unsanitary conditions, secretly and illegally; back-alley.
    • The results of self-induced and backstreet abortions come to our hospitals for the damage to be put right.1965 June 15, Renée Short, Hansard

Forms of back-street

comparativemore back-street
superlativemost back-street

Questions about back-street

What is back-street the alternative form of?
Back-street is the alternative form of backstreet.

Words near back-street in the dictionary

  1. back-stairs
  2. back-stop
  3. back-stops
  4. back-stories
  5. back-story
  6. back-street
  7. back-stretch
  8. back-stretches
  9. back-sweeten
  10. back-sweetened
  11. back-sweetening

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back-street (page history and authors); backstreet (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “back-street.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back-street. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.