Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a lodging house or night shelter for tramps, down-and-outs, alcoholics etc.

1910		Spokane Press (WA) 22 Sept. 7/3: If I don’t cop a bundle of kale from this hike, you’ll find me kipping [...] at Hogan’s Flop.
1915		Day Book (Chicago) 18 Mar. 14/1: ‘Just bummed this pill from a guy who was next to me in the flop,’replied the man.
1917		(con. 1908) E. Lynn Adventures of a Woman Hobo 9: All the horrors of shivering nights in the open or in vermin-infested flop houses.
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 30: ‘Flophouses’ are nearly all alike. Guests sleep on the floor or in bare, wooden bunks.
1935		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Judgement Day in Studs Lonigan (1936) 520: Sinking lower and lower, living in a flophouse.
1948		(con. 1944) N. Mailer Naked and Dead 231: Red switches to a job as night clerk in one of the flophouses on the Bowery.
1957		Kerouac On The Road (1972) 162: We even visited some drunken seamen in a flophouse.
1964		H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 108: When she crawled out of a flophouse she fell in the nearest bar.
1970		T. Parker Frying-Pan 97: At least we’ve found somewhere that’s not a flop-house we can send homeless men to.
1988		J. Healy Grass Arena (1990) 94: That’s why he liked to sleep alone. It also kept him free of the stale smell of flop-houses.
1990		Lincoln Star (NE) 29 Dec. 6/4: Clusters of flops were known as ‘Skid Row’.
1991		(con. 1920s) O.D. Brooks Legs 61: If things don’t work out you won’t have much trouble finding us if you check the flops on skid row.
1998		K. Anderson Night Dogs 322: [A] flophouse where residents hung their clothes from the chicken-wire ceilings.
1999		Guardian Rev. 10 July 11: Richard is on his first night in a flop-down Thai hostel.
2000		Indep. Rev. 14 Feb. 7: Our various $5 dollar-a-night flophouses – where he had insisted on separate rooms.
2003		T. Dorsey Stingray Shuffle 166: He ended up living in a Reno flophouse working [...] as a dishwasher.
2008		G. Pelecanos Way Home (2009) 272: It was not a plastic sheet flophouse, but it was close.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 346: Morty drops me off a few streets away from the luxury flophouse.
2014		E. McNamara ‘Authenti City’ in ThugLit Sept. [ebook] Every massage parlor is a flophouse for the tuggers.
2024		D. Swierczynski California Bear 279: He’d long assumed it was a kind of flophouse for coked-up executives to impress young ingenues.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1930		‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 172: He always sleeps in a four-bit bed and washes his own socks and shirt in the flop house wash-bowls.
1956		T. Thursday ‘Dead Men Don’t Move’ in Smashing Detective Stories Jan. 🌐 If he was a flophouse wino, he would have his passing printed near the classified ad sections.
1959		Murtagh & Harris Who Live In Shadow (1960) 17: He is what is known around Junktown as a birdcage hype, a flophouse type.
1981		E. Bunker Little Boy Blue (1995) 197: They found a wino leaning in the doorway of a flophouse hotel.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 23: ‘Uncle!’ Joe had shouted, reaching for the flophouse ceiling.

3. a cheap hotel.

1930		J.T. Farrell ‘Twenty-five Bucks’ in Short Stories (1937) 183: Flop houses whose corridors were fouled with musty lavatory odors.
1970		Galton & Simpson ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ Steptoe and Son [TV script] I understand there’s a million flop-houses up around Earls Court.

4. a brothel.

c.1908		in J. Monaghan Schoolboy, Cowboy, Mexican Spy (1977) 52: My father was hanged as a horse thief. / My mother was burned as a witch. / My sisters ain’t fit f’r a flop house, / I’m a cow-punching son-of-a-bitch.
1966		F. Elli Riot (1967) 43: There was Duke Trusdale, a flop-house pimp.

5. (Aus.) anywhere that resembles sense 1.

1991

R.G. Barrett Between the Devlin 122: [B]eing back at home after that flophouse in Randwick.