walk the streets

idiomatic 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

Word History

First Known Use

1530, in the meaning defined at sense 1