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mean streets. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
mean streets, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Noun
mean streets pl (normally plural, singular mean street)
- (of an urban environment) A district or set of locales in which there is a high incidence of poverty, crime, disrepair, antisocial behavior, or other adverse conditions.
1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 38, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, , published 1839, →OCLC:Mr Squeers began to thrust his head out of the window every half-minute, and to bawl a variety of directions to the coachman; and after passing, with some difficulty, through several mean streets which the appearance of the houses and the bad state of the road denoted to have been recently built, Mr Squeers suddenly tugged at the check string with all his might, and cried, 'Stop!'
1903 October, Jack London, chapter 19, in The People of the Abyss, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:While it is not a city of slums, as some people imagine, it may well be said to be one gigantic slum. From the standpoint of simple decency and clean manhood and womanhood, any mean street, of all its mean streets, is a slum.
1997 August 21, “Lucky to be alive”, in Lancashire Telegraph, UK, retrieved 15 April 2022:Expectant dog 'Lucky' lived up to her name when a Blackburn woman came to her rescue after being abandoned on the mean streets of Manchester.
2007 March 4, Buzz Bissinger, “Philadelphia Stories”, in New York Times, retrieved 15 April 2022:In the early 1980s, […] I was a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer trying to act fearless covering the mean streets of a city with more mean ones than perhaps any in America.
2023 September 4, Adam Gabbatt, quoting Eric Adams, “‘Rat tours’ boom in rodent-infested New York”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:“New York City used to be known for our mean streets, but, going forward, we’re going to be known for our clean streets,” Adams said in June.