walk the streets

phrase

1

: to walk in a city

People don't feel safe walking the streets at night.

My wife was away and it was the middle of winter, and I remember getting home and I'd lost my keys. I had to walk the streets with my daughter screaming in the cold.

—Josh Widdecombe, quoted in The Independent (London)

2

: to find customers as a sex worker by walking around in the streets

… the girl said she was being held against her will in a hotel room and forced "to walk the streets and perform sex acts for money," investigators said in court records.

—Nate Gartrell

Examples of walk the streets in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Bass, instead of her mother, walked the streets and knocked on doors. — Los Angeles Times, 2 Nov. 2026

The actor has walked the streets that Wollstonecraft trod over two centuries ago, taking in museums that now celebrate her life. — Baz Bamigboye, Deadline, 23 Oct. 2026

Women were prohibited from working or from walking the streets alone. — Dexter Filkins, New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2026

Victims of gun violence, police violence, robberies, and addictions walk the streets outside, repeating their last movements, behaviors, and desires. — Ben Travers, IndieWire, 24 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1530, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for walk the streets

• parakeets
• spherulites
• actinomycetes
• ascomycetes
• athletes
• broadsheets
• competes
• completes
• conceits
• concretes
• deceits
• defeats