Flophouse
//ˈflɒphaʊs// noun, verb, slang
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms. US, slang
"In one of [Cincinnati’s] slum districts stands the Silver Moon, a “flop house” (i.e., a house where the occupants are “flopped” out of their hanging bunks by letting down the ropes)."
- 2 a cheap lodging house wordnet
Verb
- 1 To stay in a flophouse. intransitive
"August was aware of Robert's strange quirk of flophousing away from home and that he often spent weekends at the Diana."
Example
More examples"In one of [Cincinnati’s] slum districts stands the Silver Moon, a “flop house” (i.e., a house where the occupants are “flopped” out of their hanging bunks by letting down the ropes)."
Etymology
From flop + house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).
Related phrases
More for "flophouse"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.