1 back-alley | Definition of back-alley

back-alley

adjective
back-al·​ley

Definition of back-alley

1 : having a mean, furtive, or squalid character or air back-alley gossip
2 : done secretly and illegally by someone using crude and dangerous methods … postabortion distress (often caused by back-alley operations).— Marguerite Holloway, Scientific American, April 2001

First Known Use of back-alley

1894, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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