slum

noun

1. 1

   A dilapidated neighborhood where many people live in a state of poverty.

   Go to the half built-upon slums behind Battlebridge […] you will find groups of boys […] squatting in the mud, among the rubbish, the broken bricks, the dust-heaps, and the fragments of timber […]

   I saw that most of those who were spending from eight to fifteen pounds monthly had the advantage of scholarships. I had before me examples of much simpler living. I came across a fair number of poor students living more humbly than I. One of them was staying in the slums in a room at two shillings a week and living on two pence worth of cocoa and bread per meal from Lockhart's cheap Cocoa Rooms.

   Another place where, from the aesthetic point of view, a long tunnel would have been a real blessing, is East London as viewed from the carriage window on the old Great Eastern line. Despite a vast change from crowded slums to tracts of wasteland, due to its grim wartime experience, this approach still provides a shabby and unworthy introduction to the great capital.

   Pearson's London was what we now call central London, and much of it was slums. Today most of us wouldn't say no to a pied à terre in Clerkenwell, but in 1850 it was a slum. Drury Lane? A slum. Seven Dials and Covent Garden? Holborn and Finsbury? Slums.

2. 2

   slangInexpensive trinkets awarded as prizes in a carnival game.

   The lower the price of slum the better it is for the operator who can either give more of it out or build up the size of his big prizes. It is the big prizes that bring the play, even though the winner has to be satisfied with a piece of slum for his efforts.

   Another hanky pank is the darts and balloons. No gaffs, no grift, nothing phoney. Game for the kids and the family. Get a dozen gross of slum and pass it out to the kids, and everybody'll love you.

   Making twenty times his investment in only seconds, the concessionaire smiled as he awarded the nickel slum, often a stuffed worm, to each unwitting pigeon.

verb

1. 1

   To visit a neighborhood of a status below one's own.

   The princess goes slumming.

   When you meet the girl who wouldn't et cetera you will tell her that you are slumming, visiting your own six A.M. Lower East Side of the soul on a lark, stepping nimbly between the piles of garbage to the gay marimba rhythms in your head.

   While slumming had long been an indulgence; if not liberty, of many well-to-do men (and some women), the intimate theaters created by Prohibition brought together elements of normally disparate social groups through a special form of bonding, breaking the law and enjoying it.

2. 2

   datedTo saunter about in a disreputable manner.

noun

1. 1

   slangSlumgullion; a meat-based stew.

noun

1. 1

   obsoleteNonsense; humbug.

   And this, without more slum began, / Over a flowing pot-house can, / To settle, without botheration, / The rigs of this here tip-top nation.

Forms

plural

slums

past tense

slummed

past participle

slummed

present participle

slumming

third person singular

slums