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penny dreadful

noun

Etymology

From its low price and the lower-class British use of dreadful (“sensationalized crime reporting”).

Definitions

  1. A cheap paperback book, particularly those concerning lurid depictions of crime in the…

    A cheap paperback book, particularly those concerning lurid depictions of crime in the Victorian era.

    • They can read the ‘penny dreadful’, but they cannot darn their stockings or mend their shoes.

  2. Pulp fiction

    Pulp fiction: stories written in the lurid style of the penny dreadfuls.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for penny dreadful. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA