Palookaville
Palookaville proper noun: an imaginary town, the natural home of the mediocre and incompetent.
Proper noun
Palookaville
- An imaginary town, the natural home of the mediocre and incompetent.
- But what holds it is the working-class poetry of Derek Ahonen’s script, with the “broken down dreams” and a “gutter full of empty stomachs” of a hard-boiled era of soulful stiffs and dreamers going nowhere. It’s the speeded-up sound of a return trip to Palookaville.2010 March 15, Jason Zinoman, “Dreams Die Hard, Even in Palookaville”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- Ram’s descent plays out against a backdrop of New York as Palookaville, full of free-floating hostility and natives who spout movie-bred clichés.2012 September 7, Rachel Saltz, “Living in a Material World”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Origin of Palookaville
From palooka (“a stupid or oafish person”) + -ville. Popularized in On the Waterfront (1954).
Words formed from Palookaville
Phrases with Palookaville
Questions about Palookaville
- What does Palookaville mean?
- Palookaville means an imaginary town, the natural home of the mediocre and incompetent.
- What part of speech is Palookaville?
- Palookaville is a proper noun.
Words near Palookaville in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Palookaville (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: “Palookaville.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/palookaville. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.