back-alley
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of back-alley
An Americanism dating back to 1860–65
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Toño’s specialty is Peru’s Creole scene, which makes him an object of mockery among the high-minded musicologists in the academy and, given his intellectual pretensions, an equally risible figure in Lima’s back-alley bars where the music is performed.
Shades of Charli XCX’s chaotic back-alley meta-entrance into the Crypto.com arena from Addison Rae here, with a cool pivot into choreo.
From Los Angeles Times
He also made it to a house party with a wait list of more than 600 people, many of whom were trying to squeeze their way into a back-alley entrance, which left him with another takeaway.
On this Sunday morning, she, Winslet and Erivo sit with Demi Moore, who undergoes a dramatic physical transformation after receiving a back-alley rejuvenation treatment in “The Substance”; Zoe Saldaña, returning to singing and dancing as a lawyer protecting a Mexican cartel leader in the Spanish-language musical “Emilia Perez”; and Saoirse Ronan, starring as a young woman grappling with her sobriety in remote Scotland in “The Outrun” and as a British mother searching for her lost son during the Nazi bombing of London during World War II in “The Blitz.”
From Los Angeles Times
But there’s a real passion for the movie and Moore’s turn as Elisabeth Sparkle, a faded star who submits to a back-alley rejuvenation regime to reset her career.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
