slum
Pronunciation Noun

slum (plural slums)

  1. A dilapidated neighborhood where many people live in a state of poverty.
    • Charles Dickens, Gambling ↗:
      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 […]
    • 1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter xvi ↗:
      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.
  2. (slang) Inexpensive trinkets awarded as a prizes in a carnival game.
Synonyms Translations
  • French: bidonville
  • German: Slum
  • Italian: bassofondo, quartiere degradato, baraccopoli
  • Portuguese: favela (Brazil), bairro de lata (Portugal), musseque (Angola)
  • Russian: трущо́ба
  • Spanish: barrio marginal, barrio pobre; (regional) asentamiento (Guatemala), barriada bruja (Panama), barriada de emergencia (Panama), barrio (Venezuela), barrio de chabolas (Spain), barrio periférico (Ecuador), cantegril (Uruguay), colonia de paracaidistas (Mexico), colonia proletaria (Mexico), ciudad perdida (Mexico), población callampa (Chile), precario (Costa Rica), pueblo joven (Peru), tugurio (Colombia), villa miseria (Argentina, Paraguay), barrio bajo
Verb

slum (slums, present participle slumming; past and past participle slummed)

  1. (intransitive) To visit a neighborhood of a status below one's own.
Related terms
  • slum it
Noun

slum (uncountable)

  1. (slang) slumgullion; a meat-based stew



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