WORD FOR THE DAY: LOW-RENT

Your word for today is: low-rent, adj.

low-rent, adj.

[‘ Of property: cheap to rent.’]

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌləʊˈrɛnt/,  U.S. /ˌloʊˈrɛnt/

Etymology: <  low adj. + rent n.¹

 1.  Of property: cheap to rent.

1912 Amer. Econ. Rev. 2 146 The provision of low-rent homes for workmen.

1936 Times 13 Jan. 9/1 These will consist chiefly of road-work and the building of low-rent houses.

1946 Fortune Aug. 180/2 The stores.plan..to encourage customers to lay in as much as ten days' supply of frozen foods at a time, delivered on telephone order direct from low-rent depots to the home.

2003 Chicago Tribune (Midwest ed.) 21 Sept. xiii. 8/1 ‘Hi-Los’, for those who nurture high-minded artistic tastes in low-rent apartments.

 2.  orig. U.S. slang. Second-rate, cheap, tacky. Cf. down-market adj.

1966 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) Summer 3/2 This cafe is low rent.

1979 Chron.-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) 2 Mar. (CT TV section) 8/1 Silverman has tried deperately to kill off his image as a vulgar huckster of low-rent programming.

1984 InfoWorld (Nexis) 3 Dec. 39 We've always done things the lowrent way... We develop on the cheap.

1997  I Sinclair Lights out for Territory (1998) 43 Even Arsenal Football Club found Woolwich too lowrent and relocated to Highbury.

2004  C. Lee Aloft v. 139 He's dressed as usual in his low-rent white-collar style.

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