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Glite Dictionary
back street

back street

5 3.3
A narrow street behind main streets that few people use
  • noun
translation icon : calle trasera
  • They enjoyed walking through the back streets of the city, admiring the old architecture.

So it's a small apartment on a back street in an in an Ocean County town, popular town.

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Examples

  • The small café was hidden in a quiet back street away from the busy high street.

  • So it's a small apartment on a back street in an in an Ocean County town, popular town.

    Julian Dorey

  • His apartment sits on a back street far from everything.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • We've now ended up in the back streets of Mexico City.

  • We landed at the Mobile Blues Club in the back streets of Hamburg, where we were playing that night.

    Blog text (7)

  • If you've been to Prague, then you know how condensed and tiny some of those back streets are.

    Blog text (7)

  • Somewhere out there in the city, maybe on the loop, maybe tooling through the back streets, Evelyn and Rip Cord were converging on Louie's.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Arthur, Nithe, and I walked through muddy London's back streets as three visitors from the country, looking at everything there was to see, ignoring the dirt.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • As we explored the back street, we stumbled upon a quaint bookstore and a vintage shop.

Synonyms

alley
vsback street
349 1.0

A narrow street between buildings, often behind shops or houses

places emphasis on being less frequented and sometimes enclosed instead of general passage
alleyway
vsback street
37 2.7

A narrow passage between buildings, often behind them

focuses more on being less frequented and sometimes enclosed rather than tall walls
back alley
vsback street
  • US
16 2.7

A narrow street behind buildings used as a shortcut

is more about a narrow hidden way rather than its use for deliveries
backstreet
vsback street
9 2.6

A small quiet street away from the main roads in a town or city

is narrower and often enclosed between walls rather than just small and quiet

Antonyms

main street
  • US
23 1.4

The main road in a town where most shops and businesses are

How Busy

main street
  • US
23 1.4
side street
23 2.2
back street
5 3.3
alley
349 1.0

Surface Forms

back street singular
back streets plural

Morphology

back + street

The meaning 'a street at the rear or away from main thoroughfares' is directly and compositionally derived from 'back' (at the rear) + 'street' (public road), so a learner who knows both words can infer the MWE. This is a common, cross-linguistically transparent modifier+noun pattern (e.g. Spanish 'calle trasera', French 'rue arrière'), so it should be immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Back street comes from the image of a back street tucked behind the main roads, narrow and often out of sight. Because these lanes were quiet or hidden, people used them to move unseen, so the phrase now means 'a less frequented or secret street'.