SLUM (slummed, slumming)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected forms: slummed    , slumming   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does slum mean? 

• SLUM (noun)
  The noun SLUM has 1 sense:

1. a district of a city marked by poverty and inferior living conditions

  Familiarity information: SLUM used as a noun is very rare.

• SLUM (verb)
  The verb SLUM has 1 sense:

1. spend time at a lower socio-economic level than one's own, motivated by curiosity or desire for adventure; usage considered condescending and insensitive

  Familiarity information: SLUM used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SLUM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A district of a city marked by poverty and inferior living conditions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

slum; slum area

Hypernyms ("slum" is a kind of...):

city district (a district of a town or city)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "slum"):

shantytown (a city district inhabited by people living in huts and shanties)

skid row (a city district frequented by vagrants and alcoholics and addicts)

Derivation:

slum (spend time at a lower socio-economic level than one's own, motivated by curiosity or desire for adventure; usage considered condescending and insensitive)

slummy ((of housing or residential areas) indicative of poverty)

• SLUM (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they slum    ... he / she / it slums   
Past simple: slummed   
Past participle: slummed   
-ing form: slumming   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Spend time at a lower socio-economic level than one's own, motivated by curiosity or desire for adventure; usage considered condescending and insensitive

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Context example:

attending a motion picture show by the upper class was considered sluming in the early 20th century

Hypernyms (to "slum" is one way to...):

pass; spend (use up a period of time in a specific way)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

slum (a district of a city marked by poverty and inferior living conditions)

 Context examples 

We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Among the women was one who painted portraits, another who was a professional musician, and still another who possessed the degree of Doctor of Sociology and who was locally famous for her social settlement work in the slums of San Francisco.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a little pulpy boy in a San Francisco slum—soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into something.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

His mind seemed to turn, on the instant, into a vast camera obscura, and he saw arrayed around his consciousness endless pictures from his life, of stoke-holes and forecastles, camps and beaches, jails and boozing-kens, fever-hospitals and slum streets, wherein the thread of association was the fashion in which he had been addressed in those various situations.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded gilt nineteen-hundreds.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)