flophouse means A cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms. It carries an Arena rating of 1498, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, flophouse ranks #2,340 of 14,361 for Most Ingenious Words, #2,374 of 14,451 for Most Whimsical Words, #7,156 of 14,410 for Most Ponderous Words, #7,180 of 14,444 for Most Exacting Words.
flophouse is pronounced /ˈflɒphaʊs/.
Why “flophouse” is a great word
A cheap, transient lodging offering only a space to lie down, often in communal squalor for a nightly cash payment. From American hobo slang around 1904: *flop* (to lie down to sleep) + *house* (building). Unlike a hostel, which implies a budgeted, socially-organized stop for travelers, or a boarding house, which suggests domestic regularity with meals and permanence, a flophouse is defined solely by its economy of despair. It is the smell of disinfectant over sweat, the symphony of coughs and springs in a long dormitory, the thin mattress surrendered to the next man at dawn—the architecture of last resort, where the price of a night’s oblivion is the surrender of all other comforts.
Etymology
From flop + house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).
noun
- A cheap hotel or boarding house where many people sleep in large rooms.“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).”
verb
- To stay in a flophouse.“August was aware of Robert's strange quirk of flophousing away from home and that he often spent weekends at the Diana.”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- hostelry 83% match — An inn that provides overnight accommodation for travellers (and, originally, their horses). vs flophouse →
- tenement 82% match — A building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one. vs flophouse →
- roadhouse 80% match — An inn or similar establishment situated beside a road beyond the jurisdiction of a town or city. In the centuries before motor vehicles, such inns were places for travellers to stop at night during multi-day journeys, besides being public houses for their local countryfolk. vs flophouse →
- bindlestiff 80% match — A tramp (hobo) who carries a bedroll or a bundle of possessions. vs flophouse →
- bordello 80% match — A brothel. vs flophouse →
- almshouse 79% match — A building of residence for the poor, sick or elderly of a parish. Originally founded by the Church, and usually funded by charitable donations. vs flophouse →
- pesthouse 79% match — An establishment which provides shelter or care to sufferers of pestilence or other contagious infections. vs flophouse →
- workhouse 79% match — An institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work. vs flophouse →