slum.

A densely inhabited urban area marked by severely inadequate housing and poor basic services.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• overcrowded slum
• slum clearance
• slum redevelopment

On the page

The city labeled the neighborhood a slum but had never installed sewers there.

Slum clearance displaced tenants whose replacement housing was never built.

Her account of growing up in a slum centered on friendships rather than filth.

Usage notes

Primary category: setting. Strongly negative and potentially stigmatizing. Poverty alone does not justify this label; state material conditions rather than making moral judgments about residents. Plural: slums. No other inflection applies to this noun.