Etymology From flop + house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).
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US, Slang 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).1904, McClure’s Magazine, November 1904
We even visited some drunken seamen in a flophouse on Mission Street that she knew; they offered us whisky.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC:
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He was born out back of a twopenny flophouse in what the wags called “The Holy Land” […].1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 34:
Etymology From flop + house, originally hobo slang, presumably from slang flop (“lie down to sleep”).
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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.1941, James F. Waters, The Court of Missing Heirs, page 53:
I kept going nowhere, bummed the country, boxcar'd it, breadlined it, flophoused it, that cruddy dying by inches in jungles when, Christ-o, outa the knocked-out black and blue I'm told I gotta go to war, gotta fight for freedom.1960, Alan Kapelner, All the naked heroes: a novel, page 337:
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For old time's sake we plan to flophouse with you over the parturient period.1989, S. Prideaux, Fine Arts, page 202: