Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) a seedy bar which may also offer music, gambling, prostitutes; thus honky-tonker, a promiscuous woman who haunts such bars.

1891		Daily Ardmorite (Ardmore, OK) 24 Feb. n.p.: The honk-a-tonk last night was well attended by ball-heads, bachelors and leading citizens.
1898		Times (Wash., DC) 22 Aug. 3/3: A spcial dance [...] wa given in one of the worst of these honkytonks.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 359: P’raps you don’t remember when you was doin’ sixteen shows a day with your first husband in a Butte honkatonk.
1916		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 7 Apr. [synd. col.] A Coney Island custom which was responsible for the closing of the seaside honky-tonks.
1929		R. Bradford This Side of Jordan 120: She finally ‘arrived’ as a full-fledged ‘entertainer’ in a moderately mean honkytonk.
1936		R. Chandler ‘Goldfish’ in Red Wind (1946) 180: There were fishstalls, drinking dives, a tiny honkytonk for the fishermen.
1941		A. Lomax Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 54: These honkey-tonks ran wide open twenty-four hours a day.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 300: Gay New Orleans! And not a levee, crib, red light, barrelhouse or honky-tonk in sight.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 10: He’d pick up a dame in one of the honky-tonks down the street.
1960		P. Oliver Blues Fell this Morning 7: From the honky-tonks of New Orleans came the ‘black butt’ pianists.
1966		‘Tom Pendleton’ Iron Orchard (1967) 151: He had no use for honkytonkers. It wasn’t only the bad experience he had had with one who had infected him with gonorrhea. He looked upon honkytonkers as harpies who preyed on lonely sex-starved oil-field hands and gave nothing in return.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players 161: About eighteen months ago I sat in a little honky-tonk in the Fillmore and watched this big cat come in from Los Angeles.
1983		New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung (TX) 7 Sept. 128/5: One smoky, linoleum-floored honky-tonk features a dozen prostitutes.
1999		Observer Travel 3 Oct. 4: Like a good British pub, this honky tonk is dimly lit.
2001		(con. late 19C) C. Jeffords Shady Ladies of the Old West 🌐 The lower grade of bordello came to be called a ‘honkytonk,’ from a common Southern Negro term.
2008		J. Lansdale Leather Maiden 90: We went to a place that was a kind of cross between a club and a honky-tonk.
2017		T. Pluck Bad Boy Boogie [ebook] A bayou honkytonk.
2021		T. Pluck Boy from County Hell 14: [She] made him drop her at the first honky tonk they found.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1917		Emerson Military Band [instrumental title] Honky Tonk Rag.
1922		Morn. Tulsa Daily World (OK) 13 May 1/2: The city is infested with [...] cowboys who shoot out the lights in honky-tonk dance halls.
1943		W.R. Burnett Nobody Lives for Ever 27: [T]he battered old electric piano [...] began to play a ten-year-old tune, honky-tonk style, grindingly discordant.
1956		J. Stearn Sisters of the Night 17: Touring these honkytonk bars [...] I had met the B-girls.
1957		N. Algren ‘G-String Gomorrah’ in Entrapment (2009) 198: The end of State Street is the end [...] of Babylon, the edge of honky-tonk country.
1967		H.S. Thompson letter 23 Nov. in Proud Highway (1997) 650: Honkytonk owners are unlibelable.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 57: He shouted above a background of honky tonk pandemonium.
1983		S. King Christine 185: Back in the days when [...] Johnny Horton was singing about dancing all night on a honky-tonk hardwood floor.
1992		R.C. Cruz Straight Outta Compton 17: Singing honky-tonk tunes telling our big heads to hit the road, Jack.

3. (US) a small town.

1986

S. King It (1987) 868: These [...] changed Derry from a sleepy little ship-building town into a booming honky-tonk where the ginmills never closed.