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right side of the tracks
Idioms and Phrases
The desirable part of town, as in They were relieved to learn that his fiancée came from the right side of the tracks . This expression alludes to the fact that when a railroad ran through a town, it often divided the prosperous neighborhoods from the poor ones. The latter district was called the wrong side of the tracks , as in The children from the wrong side of the tracks often came to school without having eaten breakfast . Today these terms are considered snobbish. [Second half of 1800s]Example Sentences
In the '50s we had James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and Marlon Brando in "The Wild One," rumbling with switchblades and getting their scrapes kissed by lovers who had stepped over from the right side of the tracks to scuff their saddle shoes for a little adventure.
“The right side of the tracks,” he said with perhaps a tinge of sarcasm.
The family was wealthy; Davis liked to say that she had been born on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean but on “the very right side of the tracks.”
The family was wealthy; Ms. Davis liked to say that she had been born on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean but on “the very right side of the tracks.”
The younger of two children, Evelyn Yvonne DeJong was born Aug. 16, 1929, in Amsterdam, on what she called “the wrong side of the ocean but the very right side of the tracks.”
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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