Word of the DaySaturday, December 30, 2000
Grub Street
\GRUB-street\ , noun:1.
The world or category of impoverished literary hacks.
Quotes:
There is no more disgruntled pilgrim on Grub Street than an author of a freshly published book.
-- Carol Brightman, "Sweet Chaos, Fat Trip", New York Times, March 7, 1999
For decades Nashville has been Grub Street to a surfeit of young song hustlers who grew up somewhere else and arrived in town by bus or by '41 Buick to try out a trunkful of lines as supple as "I'm so lonesome I could cry" or as crass as "She broke my heart (I broke her jaw)" on anyone who will lend an ear.
-- Nicholas Dawidoff, In the Country of Country: People and Places in American Music
Origin:
Grub Street, near Moorfields, London, was once famous for literary hacks and inferior literary productions. It was described by Dr. Johnson as "much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems." The street was renamed Milton Street in 1830.
