flophouse

Definition

A cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms.

Etymology

From flop + house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).

Example Sentences

• "In one of [Cincinnati’s] slum districts stands the Silver Moon, a “flop house” (i.e., a house where the occupants are “flopped” out of their hanging bunks by letting down the ropes)."
• "We even visited some drunken seamen in a flophouse on Mission Street that she knew; they offered us whisky."
• "He was born out back of a twopenny flophouse in what the wags called “The Holy Land” […]."