Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) an illicit drinking establishment or any similarly down-market place of entertainment, a brothel.

1867		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 12 Jan. 4: This ‘moll’ keeps a ‘dive’ on Plumb Street, in ‘Nigger Row.’.
1877		Chicago Street Gazette 22 Sept. n.p.: There is a dive on North LaSalle Street, called a wine hall, kept by an old procuress.
1883		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Jan. 5/1: He is on the staff of the San Francisco News Letter [...] and has done some service by making and publishing analyses of the liquors served out to the public in the ‘dives’ and saloons of the city.
1884		Sporting Times 2 Sept. 2/3: Orpheus and Eurydice, generally conceded to be the most disgustingly filthy burlesque ever produced in this country. The Baldwin [Theatre] will soon be ranked among the dives.
1887		Lantern (New Orleans, LA) 8 Oct. 3: The owners of these dives also knew they would have to close up shop and walk the chalk-line once the police took the matter in hand.
1896		Anaconda Standard (MT) 4 June 10/4: A vicious woman prisoner [...] was a denzen [sic] of ‘Dug’s Dive’ [...] the resort of thieves, thugs and evil women.
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 23 Jan. 4/2: Neither the ‘dives’ of ’Frisco nor any other part of the world [...] can surpass them [i.e. Sydney ‘sly-grog shops’] for barefaced robbery, drunkenness and foul language.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 194: The seeing New York tourists were grumbling. Their guide had led them into a few mild dives in Chinatown.
1916		J. Lait ‘Canada Kid’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 158: Is they in this here queer tank a joint, a dive, or a hospital where a guy can get a little swallow o’ booze, whisky, alcohol, rum, or fusel-oil?
1919		‘Sax Rohmer’ Dope 230: I’ve got half a dozen men doing every dive from Wapping to Gravesend.
1927		H. Asbury Gangs of N.Y. 47: The Block contained the famous dive kept by a giant Negro woman known variously as Big Sue and the Turtle.
1930		E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 68: Flapper: We’ll go to Harlem to a coloured show and then do the dives.
1938		G. Kersh Night and the City 25: He’ll be afraid to go downstairs into any of the dives.
1938		L. Ortzen Down Donkey Row 38: Dickie Bell’s goin’ ter knock dahn that stable by the railway arch. Goin’ ter make a boxin’ dive there.
1941		A. Gurney Bluey & Curley 14 Aug. [synd. cartoon strip] How did you get your head busted [...] In a low dive!!!
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 182: About the only places we could play like we wanted were illegal dives.
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 24: We’ve got to end this meeting in dives and sneaking around.
1963		(con. 1944) L. Glassop Rats in New Guinea 34: Those society girls can’t dance. Let’s go to a dive.
1963		A. Baron Lowlife (2001) 41: The club is in an alley off Aldgate. Not a spieler but a right dive.
1974		(con. 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 226: A dive called the Stockyards Saloon & Recreation, a low, one-room heap of boards held together by tin beer and soft drink signs.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 279: The bellowing movie marquees, the clip joints and dives and neon curlicues.
1987		T. Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities 168: A jolly Brit giant in fashionable low dives.
1988		A. Hollinghurst Swimming-Pool Library (1998) 196: The club went back a bit and under different names had been a modish Sixties dive.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 173: After a night of chaotic carousing in the late-night dives of old London Town.
2006		D. Seabrook Jack of Jumps (2007) 207: Mary Fleming [...] drank a lot, mostly whisky and mostly at dives in Notting Hill.
2012		T. Piccirilli Last Kind Words 19: Collie would be found drinking beer at a corner dive called the Elbow Room.
2020		A. Parks Bobby March Will Live Forever 227: [T]he Strathmore [public house] was a dive even by Maryhill’s less than stellar standards.

2. any unappealing place; a slum, any form of run-down housing.

1872		E. Crapsey Nether Side of NY 159: [I]n detective parlance every foul place is a ‘dive,’ whether it be a cellar or garret, or neither.
1891		Kinsley Graphic (KS) 17 Apr. 3/3: You go down the stairs, which are wet and decayed with filth, and at the bottom you find the poor victims on the floor, cold, sick [...] These are the ‘dives’ nto which pickpockets and thieves go.
1920		F. Packard White Moll 145: This gun won’t make much noise, and it isn’t likely to arouse the inmates of this dive.
1925		D. Hammett ‘Dead Yellow Women’ Story Omnibus (1966) 156: I called Loop Pigattis’ place — a dive down on Pacific Street.
1936		R. Chandler ‘Goldfish’ in Red Wind (1946) 180: There were fishstalls, drinking dives.
1948		D. Dodge Bullets For The Bridegroom (1953) 24: Whit and Kitty picked the dive nearest to the spot where they parked the car upon their return to Reno.
1964		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 133: I started hittin’ up the free lunch shacks just to keep myself alive, / till at last I lucked up on a chance to sleep in a Rampart Street dive.
1983		Eble Campus Sl. Mar. 2: dive – something or some place that does not come up to acceptable standards.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We Have No 221: My mother was living in a dive.
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 138: This place is a dive.

3. (drugs) an opium den.

1919

‘Sax Rohmer’ Dope 90: Of course, her game is beating up clients for the Limehouse dive.

4. (Aus.) a tobacconist.

1920

Bulletin (Sydney) 12 Feb. 9/4: Sydney suburban tobacconists [...] say that his Early Closing Act Amendment—which shuts smoke-shops at 7 p.m. and on Saturday after- noons—was a move to fatten the city trade at their expense. Previously the suburban ‘dive’ depended on its evening sales; now many of its former customers [...] stock up before leaving town .

5. any place, irrespective of quality.

1961

W. Brown Girls on the Rampage 35: He takes me to his pad. It’s a real snazzy dive.