slums

IPA/slʌm/
KK[slˈʌmz]IPA/slʌm/

slums — noun

  • slumssingular
  • slumsesplural

1. a part of a city where many people live close together with very little money, o

1.nounB1
Definition

a part of a city where many people live close together with very little money, often in badly built or decaying housing

Example

Kofi grew up in the slums of Lagos with no running water.

collocation: grew up in the slums

The charity built a small school for children living in the slums of Jakarta.

Common collocations
  • live in the slums
  • grow up in the slums
  • slum clearance
  • inner-city slums
  • urban slums
  • slum dwellers
Synonyms
  • shantytown

    refers to a settlement of makeshift housing, often newer and less permanent than a slum

  • favela

    the specific Brazilian Portuguese term for informal urban settlements, best used only in that context

  • barrio

    a Spanish word that can mean any neighbourhood, but in English often refers to a poor Hispanic urban area

Antonyms

Usage Note

Most commonly used in the plural form. Refers to urban areas specifically, not poor rural villages.

Common Mistakes

He grew up in the ghetto of Mumbai.
He grew up in the slums of Mumbai.
'ghetto' carries a specific history of forced segregation of minority groups; 'slums' refers to the poverty and poor housing conditions themselves, without that historical layer.

2. a room, flat, or building that is extremely dirty and untidy, used to express st

2.nounB2
Definition

a room, flat, or building that is extremely dirty and untidy, used to express strong disapproval

Example

Mei refused to eat in the kitchen — she said it was a slum.

figurative use: calling a very messy room a slum

After the party, the flat was a slum — bottles and plates everywhere.

Common collocations
  • look like a slum
  • turn the place into a slum
Synonyms
  • pigsty

    a stronger, more insulting comparison — a pigsty is filthy rather than just messy

  • dump

    informal; can describe both a badly maintained building and a messy room

  • tip

    British informal for a very untidy place

Usage Note

Figurative use that compares a messy space to a poverty-stricken area. The subject is always a place the speaker sees as unacceptably filthy or chaotic.

Common Mistakes

My desk is a slums.
My desk is a slum.
the figurative sense uses the singular form 'slum' to describe a single messy room or space.
This office is a slum area.
This office is a slum.
'slum area' belongs to sense 1 (the literal poor neighbourhood). For the messy-room meaning, just say 'a slum.'

slums — verb

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

The word slums refers broadly to any very poor, crowded urban area where housing is in bad condition. A ghetto, by contrast, carries the historical meaning of a part of a city where a minority group was forced to live — so while many ghettos were also slums, the word adds a layer of enforced segregation that slums does not. A shantytown is a settlement built from makeshift materials such as corrugated iron and scrap wood, often on land the residents do not own; many shantytowns are slums, but a slum can also consist of permanent buildings that have simply decayed. Favela is the specific Brazilian Portuguese term for informal hillside settlements in cities like Rio de Janeiro — it is best reserved for that Brazilian context rather than used as a general synonym. Compare: 'He grew up in the slums of Delhi' (old decaying buildings, very poor) versus 'They live in a shantytown on the edge of Nairobi' (makeshift shelters, no formal infrastructure) versus 'She volunteers at a school in a Rio favela' (specifically Brazilian context).

ghetto ↗shantytownfavela ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • slum area
  • slum housing
  • slum neighbourhood

Phrases

  • slum it (verb phrase)

Prepositions

  • in the slums
  • from the slums

Etymology

English slangEnglish

First recorded in early 19th-century London, slum probably comes from slump, meaning 'to sink or fall,' or from an old slang word for a room of ill repute. By the 1820s it had broadened from meaning a single back room to an entire poor neighbourhood. The verb use — first 'to visit slums out of curiosity' and later 'to live in worse conditions than usual' — appeared by the late 1800s.

First known use

1825

1825, in the meaning defined above Verb