Plural of flophouse; cheap, shabby hotels or boarding houses where people pay for a night's sleep, often frequented by homeless or poor individuals.
Compound of 'flop' (to lie down heavily) and 'house,' emerging in late 19th-century American slang for cheap lodgings where one could simply 'flop' on a bed overnight.
Flophouses reveal social history: they proliferated during the Great Depression and industrialization when workers needed ultra-cheap lodging, and the term 'flop' itself captures the exhaustion of laborers literally collapsing into bed.
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