borscht circuitn.adj.
/ˈbɔːʃt ˌsəːkɪt/, U.S. /ˈbɔrʃ(t) ˌsərkət/ U.S. colloquial.
A. n.
The hotels of resort areas in the Catskill Mountains, New York State, as a source of (esp. summer) engagements for an entertainer or show.The area itself later became known informally as the borscht belt: see borscht belt n.
ΚΠ
1936 Variety 29 July 1/5 Mountain hotels on the borscht circuit are instructing their agents to discontinue sending single women or mixed couples.
1940 S. Lewis Bethel Merriday 165 I've been out on the Borscht circuit all summer.
1958 H. Gardner Piece of Action 178 We get a little club work, borscht circuit.
1973 B. Lohof in R. B. Browne Pop. Culture & Expanding Consciousness xii. 142 We nod in recollection at..Bacharach's odyssey in the borscht circuit. Working in a Catskills hotel with a quintet for forty dollars a week.
2001 Record (Bergen County, New Jersey) (Nexis) 2 July f1 Davies..has a musical bent, having worked her way through college by singing Glen Miller hits on the borscht circuit.
B. adj. (attributive).
Of or relating to the borscht circuit.
ΚΠ
1937 Variety 17 Nov. 58/3 Al Stone, backgrounded in this East Side nitery, automatically suggests a borscht circuit background.
1948 Mansfield (Ohio) News Jrnl. 1 July 13/2 Chorines accepting some Borsht Circuit jobs are practically working for boiled potatoes.
1963 Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gaz. 28 Apr. (Parade Suppl.) 16 Mickey Manners entered show business in 1946 when he won a talent contest at a Borscht Circuit hotel.
2006 L. Shaw Frank O'Hara v. 169 An improvisatory ramble by Kline through Western art.., weaving in remarks by borscht circuit comedians.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, March 2002; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
<
n.adj.1936