Word.ws English Dictionary

flophouse

UK/ˈflɒphaʊs/

flophouse noun: a cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms.

flophouse: a cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms
Image: Jacob Riis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

flophouse (plural flophouses)

  1. (US, slang) A cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms.
    • In one of [Cincinnati’s] slum districts stands the Silver Moon, a “flop house” (i.e., a house where the occupants are “flopped” out of their hanging bunks by letting down the ropes).1904, McClure’s Magazine, November 1904
    • We even visited some drunken seamen in a flophouse on Mission Street that she knew; they offered us whisky.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    doss-house, flop

Verb

flophouse (third-person singular simple present flophouses, present participle flophousing, simple past and past participle flophoused)

  1. (intransitive) To stay in a flophouse.
    • August was aware of Robert's strange quirk of flophousing away from home and that he often spent weekends at the Diana.1941, James F. Waters, The Court of Missing Heirs, page 53
    • I kept going nowhere, bummed the country, boxcar'd it, breadlined it, flophoused it, that cruddy dying by inches in jungles when, Christ-o, outa the knocked-out black and blue I'm told I gotta go to war, gotta fight for freedom.1960, Alan Kapelner, All the naked heroes: a novel, page 337

flophouse meaning in Urdu

flophouse in Urdu

بھٹیار خانہ

Examples of flophouse in a sentence

  • He was born out back of a twopenny flophouse in what the wags called “The Holy Land” […].1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 34:
  • For old time's sake we plan to flophouse with you over the parturient period.1989, S. Prideaux, Fine Arts, page 202:

Synonyms of flophouse

Forms of flophouse

Noun
pluralflophouses
alternative formflop-house
Verb
third-person singular presentflophouses
present participleflophousing
past participleflophoused
pastflophoused

Origin of flophouse

From flop + house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).

Questions about flophouse

What does flophouse mean?
Flophouse means a cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms.
What is flophouse in Urdu?
Flophouse in Urdu is بھٹیار خانہ. See Flophouse meaning in Urdu.
How do you use flophouse in a sentence?
He was born out back of a twopenny flophouse in what the wags called “The Holy Land” […].
What part of speech is flophouse?
Flophouse can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce flophouse?
Flophouse is pronounced /ˈflɒphaʊs/ (UK).
What is the plural of flophouse?
The plural of flophouse is flophouses.

Words near flophouse in the dictionary

  1. flop-houses
  2. flopdock
  3. flopdom
  4. floperoo
  5. floperoos
  6. flophouse
  7. flophoused
  8. flophouses
  9. flophousing
  10. flopless
  11. flopover

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flophouse (page history and authors); flophouse (Urdu Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-flophouse.ogg.

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