"wrong side of the tracks" meaning in English

See wrong side of the tracks in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-wrong side of the tracks.ogg [Australia] Forms: wrong sides of the tracks [plural]
Etymology: Originated from municipalities where the sections were divided by railway tracks. Head templates: {{en-noun|wrong sides of the tracks}} wrong side of the tracks (plural wrong sides of the tracks)
  1. (idiomatic) The part of town that is not inhabited by the wealthy. An area where the working class, poor or extremely poor live. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: other side of the tracks, wrong side of town Related terms: get up on the wrong side of the bed Translations (poor part of town): laitakaupunki (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-wrong_side_of_the_tracks-en-noun-qGcqwRVw Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for wrong side of the tracks meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Originated from municipalities where the sections were divided by railway tracks.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wrong sides of the tracks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "wrong sides of the tracks"
      },
      "expansion": "wrong side of the tracks (plural wrong sides of the tracks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, but he made a success of himself.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1893 June 29, “City and Vicinity”, in The Burlington Free Press and Times, volume 50, number 154, page 8",
          "text": "An arc electric light has been put toward the north side of the depot, […] As one gentleman expressed it, the people can more quickly see that they are on the \"wrong side of the track.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Douglas Kennedy, The Moment, Simon and Schuster, page 173",
          "text": "“Can you come over to the wrong side of the tracks?” she asked, an amused dryness underscoring the delivery of that question. “Always.” “I was, of course, referring to geographical matters. You live in the more chic part of Kreuzberg.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 March 31, David Yaffe-Bellany, “Ben McKenzie Would Like a Word With the Crypto Bros”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "Mr. McKenzie rose to prominence in the early 2000s playing Ryan Atwood, a brooding, musclebound teenager from the wrong side of the tracks who moves in with a wealthy family in Newport Beach, Calif.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The part of town that is not inhabited by the wealthy. An area where the working class, poor or extremely poor live."
      ],
      "id": "en-wrong_side_of_the_tracks-en-noun-qGcqwRVw",
      "links": [
        [
          "wealthy",
          "wealthy"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) The part of town that is not inhabited by the wealthy. An area where the working class, poor or extremely poor live."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "get up on the wrong side of the bed"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "other side of the tracks"
        },
        {
          "word": "wrong side of town"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "poor part of town",
          "word": "laitakaupunki"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-wrong side of the tracks.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/42/En-au-wrong_side_of_the_tracks.ogg/En-au-wrong_side_of_the_tracks.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/En-au-wrong_side_of_the_tracks.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wrong side of the tracks"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Originated from municipalities where the sections were divided by railway tracks.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wrong sides of the tracks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "wrong sides of the tracks"
      },
      "expansion": "wrong side of the tracks (plural wrong sides of the tracks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "get up on the wrong side of the bed"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, but he made a success of himself.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1893 June 29, “City and Vicinity”, in The Burlington Free Press and Times, volume 50, number 154, page 8",
          "text": "An arc electric light has been put toward the north side of the depot, […] As one gentleman expressed it, the people can more quickly see that they are on the \"wrong side of the track.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Douglas Kennedy, The Moment, Simon and Schuster, page 173",
          "text": "“Can you come over to the wrong side of the tracks?” she asked, an amused dryness underscoring the delivery of that question. “Always.” “I was, of course, referring to geographical matters. You live in the more chic part of Kreuzberg.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 March 31, David Yaffe-Bellany, “Ben McKenzie Would Like a Word With the Crypto Bros”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "Mr. McKenzie rose to prominence in the early 2000s playing Ryan Atwood, a brooding, musclebound teenager from the wrong side of the tracks who moves in with a wealthy family in Newport Beach, Calif.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The part of town that is not inhabited by the wealthy. An area where the working class, poor or extremely poor live."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "wealthy",
          "wealthy"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) The part of town that is not inhabited by the wealthy. An area where the working class, poor or extremely poor live."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-wrong side of the tracks.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/42/En-au-wrong_side_of_the_tracks.ogg/En-au-wrong_side_of_the_tracks.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/En-au-wrong_side_of_the_tracks.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "other side of the tracks"
    },
    {
      "word": "wrong side of town"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "poor part of town",
      "word": "laitakaupunki"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wrong side of the tracks"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.