back street

¹ American

noun

a street apart from the main or business area of a town.

back-street ² American

[bak-street] / ˈbækˌstrit /

adjective

taking place in secrecy and often illegally.

back-street political maneuvering; back-street drug dealing.

back street Idioms

Also, back alley. A less prominent or inferior location; also, a scene of clandestine or illegal dealings. For example, The highway department is very slow to clear snow from the back streets, or Before they were made legal, abortions were often performed in back alleys. Although back street literally means “one away from the main or business area of a town or city,” this term, from the early 1600s, became associated with underhanded dealings, and back alley, from the mid-1800s, is always used in this sense.

Etymology

Origin of back street¹

First recorded in 1630–40

Origin of back-street²

First recorded in 1895–1900

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.

See Examples For:

back street back-street

Find the right back street just south of the French Quarter, ascend a set of stairs and you’ll find Habakuk Fine Coffee and Bistro, a Michelin Bib Gourmand winner.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 17, 2026

My brilliant solution was to somehow maneuver the Civic two blocks, bucking and wheezing all the way, park it out of sight on a back street, and furtively drive my own car to Seattle.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 10, 2023

A vast array of people can be glimpsed when turning a corner or stepping into a back street.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2023

In the fading light on a recent evening, a water line formed under trees on a back street, part of the city’s after-work routine.

From New York Times ● Oct. 27, 2022

Pelletier expected to find him attached to some grand institution, so he was astounded to discover him teaching elementary arithmetic to boys in a small school on a back street.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

New Orleans is fertile ground for little back-street museums, some no bigger than a dusty room or two: alligator museums, wax museums, voodoo museums, cocktail museums, jazz museums.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 28, 2019

Campaigners supporting Bachelet's proposal say the ban on terminations forces many women to endure dangerous back-street abortions in often-unsafe conditions.

From Reuters ● Jan. 31, 2015

Lesotho has experienced a soaring rate in maternal mortality in the past five years - a trend that the minister attributes in part to a rise in back-street abortions and complications in pregnancy.

From BBC ● Mar. 8, 2011

Shaw's obsessive project might be seasoned by technical perversity and back-street humour, but when his images work they are wonderful.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 19, 2011

It was in a back-street off an alley, and although within a stone's throw of Lothbury its immediate surroundings were not exhilarating.

From A Millionaire of Yesterday by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023