Word.ws English Dictionary

Grub Street

Grub Street proper noun: the home or state of impoverished writers and literary hacks.

Proper noun

Grub Street

  1. 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

  1. grub hoes
  2. grub hut
  3. grub out
  4. grub screw
  5. grub screws
  6. Grub Street
  7. grub up
  8. grub-saw
  9. grub-saws
  10. grub-stake
  11. grub-stakes

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.

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