Trailer trash is a derogatoryNorth American English term forpoor people living in atrailer or a run-downmobile home in a bad neighborhood.[1][2] It is particularly used to denigratewhite people living in such circumstances.[3]
In the mid-20th century, poor whites who could not afford to buy suburban-styletract housing began to purchase mobile homes, which were not only cheaper but could be easily relocated if work in one location ran out. These – sometimes by choice and sometimes through localzoning laws – gathered in trailer parks, and the people who lived in them became known as "trailer trash" with the term dating to at least 1952.[4] Despite many of them having jobs, albeit sometimes itinerant ones, the character flaws that had been perceived inpoor white trash in the past were transferred to trailer trash, and trailer camps or parks were seen as being inhabited by retired people, migrant workers, and, generally, the poor. By 1968, a survey found that only 13% of those who owned and lived in mobile homes hadwhite collar jobs.[5]
Trailers got their start in the 1930s, and their use proliferated during the housing shortage ofWorld War II when the Federal government used as many as 30,000 of them to house defense workers, soldiers, and sailors throughout the country, but especially around areas with a large military or defense presence, such asMobile, Alabama andPascagoula, Mississippi. In her bookJourney Through Chaos, reporterAgnes Meyer ofThe Washington Post traveled throughout the country, reporting on the condition of the "neglected rural areas", and described the people who lived in the trailers, tents, and shacks in such areas as malnourished, unable to read or write, and generally ragged. The workers who came to Mobile and Pascagoula to work in the shipyards there were from the backwoods of the South, "subnormal swamp and mountain folk" whom the locals described as "vermin"; elsewhere, they were called "squatters". They were accused of having loose morals, highillegitimacy andcrime rates, and of allowingprostitution to thrive in their "Hillbilly Havens", and letting their children go undisciplined, causing highjuvenile delinquency rates. The trailers themselves – sometimes purchased second- or third-hand – were often unsightly, unsanitary, and dilapidated, causing communities to zone them away from the more desirable neighborhoods, which meant away from schools, stores, and other necessary facilities, often literally on the other sides of the railroad tracks.[5]
the poorest of people who live in run-down house trailers in bad neighborhoods. (Used with singular or plural force. Rude and derogatory.) : She's just trailer trash. Probably doesn't even own shoes.
poor people living in trailer parks in the US
a poor, lower-class white person, esp. one living in a mobile home with trash in the vicinity
The dictionary definition oftrailer trash at Wiktionary
