noun
Usage: often capitalized T&R
Etymology: from Tobacco Road, novel (1932) by Erskine Caldwell b 1903 American writer, and play (1933) adapted by Jack Kirkland died 1969 American playwright, about poor whites in a depressed rural area of Georgia traversed by a run-down thoroughfare (“tobacco road”) made in earlier days by rolling hogsheads of tobacco to market
: a squalid poverty-stricken area or community in which the life of the inhabitants is characterized as wretched, disorganized, and hopeless