in the gutter

1. Appropriate to or from a squalid, degraded condition. For example, The language in that book belongs in the gutter. An antonym, out of the gutter, means “away from vulgarity or sordidness,” as in That joke was quite innocent; get your mind out of the gutter. This idiom uses gutter in the sense of “a conduit for filthy waste.” [Mid-1800s]

Example Sentences

He made a big wager on natural gas when prices were in the gutter, and he has funded Comstock’s exploration at a time when its rivals are sticking with Wall Street’s strict capital edicts.

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One of the guys in the unit, raw, green, just lost it, crying, screaming—threw his M60 in the gutter and ran straight in the front door of a Whole Foods.

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There, Shula comes across the corpse of her Uncle Fred, lying in the gutter.

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"He used to hide them in the gutter above his bedroom window and in the toilet cistern - I'd cut open his old teddy bears and he'd stashed them in there - my husband and I didn't know what to do."

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We're going to play in the gutter.

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Related Words

• bankrupt 
• broke 
• destitute 
• impoverished 
• indigent 
• needy