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

Saturday morning in a back street in south London - and I am leaning on a metal railing.

From BBC ● Oct. 25, 2025

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

It’s some kind of shortcut, though, because after walking through a manicured garden, we come out of another gate onto a small back street that connects two main avenues.

From "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the man described how he had been "mesmerised" by Gustavson, but now recognised he needed to see a psychiatrist "not a back-street surgeon".

From BBC ● May 9, 2024

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

In Peru, for example, it is estimated that 13% of all maternal deaths are the result of botched back-street abortions.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 26, 2017

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

She had reached the street now,—a back-street, a crooked sort of lane rather, running between endless piles of warehouses.

From Margret Howth, a Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis

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