Word.ws English Dictionary

back streets

back streets is the plural of back street.

Meaning of back street

Noun

back street (plural back streets)

  1. A usually small and narrow street or alley, especially one in inferior or poorer parts of a city, away from the centre.
    • So much to do, so much to see
      So what's wrong with taking the back streets?
      You'll never know if you don't go
      You'll never shine if you don't glow1999 May 4, Greg Camp, “All Star”, in Astro Lounge, performed by Smash Mouth
  2. A secret, clandestine, or illegal scene.
    • Near-synonym: mean streets
    Synonyms:
    mean streets

Questions about back streets

What is back streets the plural of?
Back streets is the plural of back street.

Words near back streets in the dictionary

  1. back stories
  2. back story
  3. back straight
  4. back straights
  5. back street
  6. back streets
  7. back stretch
  8. back stretches
  9. back substitution
  10. back substitutions
  11. back talk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back streets (page history and authors); back street (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 streets.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_streets. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.