wrong side of the tracks
the wrong side of the tracks
A part of a town or city that is particularly impoverished (and usually dangerous or undesirable as a result). "Tracks" refers to railroad tracks, which are sometimes thought of as demarcating different economic areas of a town. I was always looked down on as a kid because I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. His mother didn't want him dating anyone from the wrong side of the tracks.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2015 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
wrong side of the tracks
see under right side of the tracks.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
wrong side of the tracks
n. the poor side of town. I’m glad I’m from the wrong side of the tracks. I know what life is really like.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
wrong side of the tracks, the
The undesirable side of town. This term came into being after the building of railroads, which often sharply divided a town into two districts, one prosperous and one not. (Of course, the same phenomenon had existed prior to railroad tracks.) Thus Miss Cholmondeley wrote, in Diana Tempest (1893), “The poor meagre home in a dingy street; the wrong side of Oxford Street.”
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer
wrong side of the tracks
The less desirable part of town. In many 19th- and early-20th-century America, railroad tracks divided a city or town. On one side was the middle- and upper-class residential and commercial area. On the other were factories and residential shacks and tenements. Since residents of the former made class distinctions and applied appropriate language, anyone from the other part of town came from the wrong side of the tracks.
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price Copyright © 2011 by Steven D. Price