Grub Street
Grub Street proper noun: the home or state of impoverished writers and literary hacks.
Proper noun
Grub Street
- The home or state of impoverished writers and literary hacks.
- Upon the occasion of his first publication he quit his day job, only to find that Grub Street wasn't lined with manors and villas but hovels and slums.
- Not that the existence of Grub street is to be doubted: it was, indeed, a grim actuality, and many a garreter realised by experience
How unhappy's the fate
To live by one's pate
And to be forced to write hackney for bread.1972, Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture, page 384
Origin of Grub Street
After Grub Street in London, England (now named Milton Street), a haunt of and home to impoverished writers.
Questions about Grub Street
- What does Grub Street mean?
- Grub Street means the home or state of impoverished writers and literary hacks.
- What part of speech is Grub Street?
- Grub Street is a proper noun.
Words near Grub Street in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Grub 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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “Grub Street.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grub_street. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
