antics
Today, let's slum it and explore the underworld of seedy urban haunts.
Dive: During the late 1800s, Londoners went daffy over divans. Those large, overstuffed Turkish couches were considered the height – or, rather, length – of fashion. No ornate restaurant, pub or club was complete without one. Sofa, so good.
Then, inevitably, some of these luxurious establishments declined in status, some sinking so low as to become – perish the thought! – common alehouses. But the decrepit old divans of bygone days were still there, now sagging, soiled and torn, and soon, people began calling these less-than-elegant saloons "divans," eventually shortened to "dives."
The term "dive" was no doubt reinforced by the fact that many of these disreputable taverns were located below street level and patrons often had to descend stairs ("dive") to enter them.
Skid row: Transporting large logs to sawmills isn't easy – just ask anyone who has ever been stuck behind a logging truck on a winding road. To ease the delivery process, 19th-century lumbermen (oops, wood-products specialists) in the Pacific Northwest would build long tracks of heavy boards or iron rails from the logging site and then slide the logs down these "skids" to the nearest road or sawmill.
To hasten the logs' descent, loggers would often coat the skids with lard or grease, a practice that gives us the expressions "grease the skids" and "lard the boards," though, for some reason, the latter phrase never slid into common parlance.
Because a row of loggers' shacks often sprang up along the skids, this decidedly downscale neighborhood became known as "skid row." Soon, "skid row" evolved into a general expression for any rundown neighborhood. And the down-on-their-luck people who lived there were said to be "on the skids," whether they had actually slid down a greased logging skid or not.
Seedy: There are two explanations for this term, each containing a kernel of truth. When some fruits and vegetables become overripe, they go to seed and turn nasty – hence, the association of "seedy" with decay and shabbiness, as in a "seedy neighborhood."
But others say "seedy" originally described unsophisticated rural folk who had seeds all over their hair and clothing. Because snooty urbanites considered these "hayseeds" somewhat grubby and disreputable, "seedy" became a synonym for "squalid" and "shabby."