fleapit n.
1. (also flea joint, ...palace) a cheap, tawdry, run-down hotel, motel or club, or any place.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Western Mail 13 Oct. 6/7: The poppet hill Working men’s Club [...] popularly known as the ‘Fleapit’. | |
| Leamington Spa Courier 6 Apr. 6/7: The salubrious air of the depôt flea-pit. | |
| Western Dly Press 24 Apr. 3/3: I was in the ‘Fleapit’ [...] public house last night, and had a drop of beer. | |
| Western Dly Press 20 Oct. 7/6: The ‘Flea-pit’ [...] survives. How many Bristolians know of the ‘flea-pit’. Only the sporting community. | |
| (con. 1900s) Life and Death at the Old Bailey 273: Marshall Hall hated the gloomy and dingy interior of the former Old Bailey [...] ‘The ventilation here is primitive,’ he would say, ‘and the court itself is a flea-pit!’. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | (con. 1944) Gallery (1948) 242: Let’s get the hell out of this flea joint. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | N.Z. Jack 165: ‘I’m staying at the Star,’ I said. [...] ‘You mean that flea palace?’ she asked with a laugh. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Real Thing 170: And by tea time monday you can say goodbye to this flea-pit you’re running. | |
 | Drink With the Devil 21: ‘A fleapit called the Albert Hotel,’ Keogh told him. | |
| Plainclothes Naked (2002) 59: The Black Dino thinks we [...] checked into this fleapit so he could pinch a chunk of lunch money. | |
| Call of the Weird (2006) 137: Why are you staying here? This place is a fleapit! | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Glorious Heresies 255: They lived in a fleapit and fought on the street. |
2. a (run-down) flat.
| DSUE (1984) 405/1: from ca. 1919. |
3. (also fleahouse) a cheap, tawdry, run-down cinema.
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Aberdeen Jrnl 1 Oct. 3/3: Poor Harry Hardcastle cannot even afford [...] a visit to the local ‘fleapit’. | |
| ‘The Dark Diceman’ in Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 202: The film has already begun at the Fleapit. | |
| Fowlers End (2001) 14: Of course a Super Cinema, of course. What then? What you want I should edvertise? [sic] A flea-pit. | |
| They’re a Weird Mob (1958) 131: ‘Good pitcher on ter-night,’ Dennis said. ‘Where?’ ‘Local flea house.’. | |
| Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 73: Knocking back a free night at the flea-pit [...] It just isn’t natural. | |
| Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 128: The Pillar wasn’t as posh as the Grand and looked a right flea house from the outside. | |
| Out After Dark 133: She would make for the Picture House. It was a redbrick flea-pit. | |
| (con. 1930s) Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 131: Then there was a famous cinema on the South Mall called the Assembly Rooms. It was a kind of a flea house. | |
| (con. 1960s) London Blues 67: The Nudist Story opened a little while back. Just about the biggest thing that ever hit these fleapits. | |
| Journey Through Britain 491: I have to ask permission to take a glimpse inside the well-raked, narrow cinema itself, certainly no fleapit. | |
| (con. 1980s) Skagboys 27: Imaginin [his nails] rippin through his teenage daughter’s hymen in the back row ay some fleapit. | |
| Unfaithful Music 410: They stumbled into a fleapit cinema playing Alphaville. |
4. attrib. use of sense 1.
| Down and Out 7: Flea-pit hostels and [...] squalid commercial hotels. |
5. attrib. use of sense 3.
| Three-Ha’Pence to the Angel 160: The flea-pit cinema or the soot-streaked Odeodrome. | |
| ‘Noah’s Ark’ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 88: Fourpence would [...] take you twice to the fleapit picture-house. | |
| Indep. Rev. 17 Apr. 1: She has travelled across the country, staying at every fleapit motel McVeigh ever frequented. | |
| Rough Guide to Jamaica 488: A basement complex of fleapit sex cinemas. | |
| Empty Wigs (t/s) 203: [O]ur cinema at home where there was no risk of contamination by the lusty expectorations of flea-pit urchins. |