How to Use flophouse in a Sentence

flophouse

noun
  • The first night at the flophouse, Barbosa slept on the floor.
    — Lauren Smiley, WIRED, 10 July 2024
  • At the time of the shooting, the boy lived in what Busch described as a flophouse.
    — Christina Maxouris, CNN, 16 Jan. 2023
  • Meanwhile, crime raged out of control in the flophouses.
    — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 28 Nov. 2025
  • Our flophouse in Harlem was growing crowded.
    — Zayd Ayers Dohrn, New Yorker, 28 Mar. 2026
  • The only thing the teachers are looking for in their new towns are… no flophouses.
    — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 15 May 2024
  • The place became a flophouse, a dope den and the scene of multiple homicides.
    — Courtland Milloy, Washington Post, 18 Feb. 2020
  • The street was lined with flophouses and soup kitchens, the last stop for the downtrodden and down-on-their-luck.
    — Joanne Kaufman, WSJ, 24 Aug. 2018
  • There aren’t any flophouses in her this-year’s-hometown of Arlington.
    — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 15 May 2024
  • There's plenty of livestock, lots of Lone Star sunshine, but nothing so much as a flophouse or an outhouse in sight.
    — Lynette Rice, EW.com, 5 Nov. 2021
  • After spending 10 nights in his Chevy, Smith locates a mattress for rent on the floor of a flophouse.
    — Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2021
  • The flophouses and nickel-a-drink saloons have given way to nightclubs and luxury condos.
    — Colin Moynihan, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2020
  • What was built was a 29-story baby-poop brown block of a building that looked like a cheap heating unit jutting out of a wall in a flophouse apartment.
    — Culture Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Nov. 2016
  • Back in the day, the LaSalle Hotel was a flophouse, just about the only place for downtown residents.
    — Doug Ross, Chicago Tribune, 25 Mar. 2026
  • One regular, Milt, lived in the Whitehouse Hotel, a flophouse around the corner.
    — Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2025
  • Mystery Train is set in a dingy Memphis flophouse and follows the travelers who pass through its doors, telling sweet and sad stories of their lives.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 31 Oct. 2020
  • The poolrooms, flophouses, bars, cheap restaurants, wine stores and missions remained, but their customers, and the atmosphere on the street, had changed for the worse.
    — Gary Kamiya, SFChronicle.com, 10 Aug. 2019
  • The assassin James Earl Ray shot King, who was standing on the balcony, from a flophouse bathroom across the street.
    — Latoya Ruby Frazier, The Atlantic, 3 Apr. 2018
  • The film follows 12-year-old Mikal, who shares a small room in a cheap hotel, commonly known as a flophouse, with his parents and their cat, Smokey.
    — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 26 Mar. 2025
  • If the land trust homes were going to be long-term investments rather than flophouses, the residents were going to need more than Cunningham’s handyman skills.
    — Wes Enzinna, Harper's Magazine, 5 Jan. 2023
  • The area where the attacks occurred centers on the Bowery, which has a long history of sheltering — both on the streets and in flophouses — people who are down on their luck.
    — New York Times, 5 Oct. 2019
  • In one stunning moment, Marty, trying to take a shower in a flophouse, ends up falling through the ceiling and onto a shady man (Abel Ferrara) trying to give his dog a bath in the unit below.
    — Sarah Shachat, IndieWire, 14 Jan. 2026
  • The film captured the city’s most explosive bands tearing up their stages and flophouses, making Spheeris the poet laureate of disenchanted young Los Angeles.
    — August Brown, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2023
  • At the east end of Great Jones Street lay the Bowery, a once-reputable boulevard that had become a notorious thoroughfare lined with brothels, beer gardens, flophouses and pawn shops.
    — Alex Vadukul, New York Times, 26 Dec. 2023
  • After serving over the years as a movie palace, a performing-arts venue and even a flophouse for sailors, the Balboa closed without ceremony in early April 1986, acquired by the city through eminent domain.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Jan. 2023
  • The Bowery, a street in lower Manhattan, has been the site of many flophouses, and the place where the attacks occurred lies just south of the Bowery Mission, one of the city’s oldest and most important aid organizations.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 6 Oct. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flophouse.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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