mean streets
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 1057107260:
- 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 1052903994:
- 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", 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", 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.
- 2012 November 13, Jack Lakey, "The Fixer: City trash bins should be tossed in the garbage, and the old ones brought back", The Star (Canada) (retrieved 15 April 2022):
- The city deserves a failing grade for waste bins. […] [W]e’ve noticed an increasing number that are missing plastic side panels, exposing the metal framework and furthering our conclusion that they aren't tough enough for Toronto's mean streets.
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