Dictionary

graybar hotel en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

Referring to the gray metal bars of a cell. It may have originally referred to the main jail facility in downtown Los Angeles, California; some inmates who were ashamed of admitting that they were in jail would tell friends and relatives who were out of town and that they were staying at the Graybar Hotel. Before it was torn down it was so well known that prisoners received mail addressed to the Graybar Hotel in Los Angeles.

Meanings

1. (US, slang) Jail, prison.
   • […] could well wind up in the graybar hotel if any of the situations Lauren paints here actually do take place. 2003, The Cook Report on Internet, NREN, page 37:
   • Outside his cage were more bars, and, beyond them, narrow steel-bound windows looked out over Los Angeles from the fifteenth floor of the Hall of Justice. The trusties called it the Graybar Hotel, a modern fireproof establishment, with room service. 1949, Ray Morrison, Angels Camp:
   • If you do something like this, I will be sure that you spend a long, long time in the graybar hotel. 2004, Eliot Trimberger, The Epilepsy and Osteoporosis Link, page 197:
   • Or busted and sent to the graybar hotel for twenty years on a heavy federal rap. 2001, Steve Perry, Point of Impact (Tom Clancy's Net Force), →ISBN, page 103:

Forms

Synonyms

graybar motel · gray bar motel