# cul-de-sac
## English
### Alternative forms

* culdesac, cul de sac

### Etymology

Borrowed from French cul-de-sac, from cul (“bottom”) + de (“of”) + sac (“bag, sack”).

### Pronunciation

* (General American) IPA: /ˈkʌldəsæk/
* Audio (US):(file)
* (UK) IPA: /ˈkʌldəsak/

### Noun

cul-de-sac (plural cul-de-sacs or culs-de-sac)
* A blind alley or dead end street.
** 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:Before we had gone fifty yards we perceived that all hopes of getting further up the stream in the whale-boat were at an end, for not two hundred yards above where we had stopped were a succession of shallows and mudbanks, with not six inches of water over them. It was a watery cul de sac.
** 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:His was the end house of a cul-de-sac, with the side wall of a huge brewery beyond.
* A circular area at the end of a dead end street to allow cars to turn around, designed so children can play on the street, with little or no through-traffic.
** 2010 January 17, Cara Buckley, “A Suburban Treasure, Left to Die”, in New York Times, page Section MB; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1:And in suburbs known for new development, preservationists are often battling a general perception that there is nothing historic or worth saving among the cul-de-sacs.
* (figurative) An impasse.
** 2005 February 14, National Review:Physics seems, in fact, to have got itself into a cul-de-sac, obsessing over theories so mathematically abstruse that nobody even knows how to test them.
** 2022 June 3, Günseli Yalcinkaya, quoting Mat Dryhurst, “Are you content? How the internet rewired our brains”, in Dazed‎, archived from the original on 2022-12-16:The internet is a remarkable tool to find others and coordinate, but as an end to itself can become a cul de sac of frustrated desires and circular arguments.
* (medicine) A sack-like cavity, a tube open at one end only.

#### Translations
### See also

* turning circle

## Catalan
### Etymology

Borrowing from French cul-de-sac, from cul (“bottom”) + de (“of”) + sac (“bag, sack”).

### Pronunciation

* IPA: (Central, Balearic) [ˌkul.dəˈsak]
* IPA: (Valencia) [ˌkul.deˈsak]

### Noun

cul-de-sac m (plural cul-de-sacs)
* cul-de-sac
    Synonyms: atzucac, carreró sense sortida, carreró sense eixida

### Further reading

* “cul-de-sac” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

## French
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ky.d(ə).sak/
* Audio (Paris):(file)

### Noun

cul-de-sac m (plural culs-de-sac)
* dead end, cul-de-sac (a path that goes nowhere)
* impasse

#### Synonyms

* impasse

#### Descendants

* → English: cul-de-sac

### Further reading

* “cul-de-sac”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

## Portuguese
### Pronunciation

* (Brazil) IPA: /ˌkuw.d͡ʒiˈsa.ki/ [ˌkuʊ̯.d͡ʒiˈsa.ki], /ˌkuw.d͡ʒiˈsak/ [ˌkuʊ̯.d͡ʒiˈsak]
* (Brazil) IPA: /ˌkuw.d͡ʒiˈsa.ki/ [ˌkuʊ̯.d͡ʒiˈsa.ki], /ˌkuw.d͡ʒiˈsak/ [ˌkuʊ̯.d͡ʒiˈsak]
** (Southern Brazil) IPA: /ˌkuw.deˈsak/ [ˌkuʊ̯.deˈsak], /ˌkuw.deˈsa.ki/ [ˌkuʊ̯.deˈsa.ki]
* (Portugal) IPA: /ˌkul.dɨˈsak/ [ˌkuɫ.dɨˈsak]
* (Portugal) IPA: /ˌkul.dɨˈsak/ [ˌkuɫ.dɨˈsak]
** (Southern Portugal) IPA: /ˌku.li.dɨˈsak/ [ˌku.li.ðɨˈsak]

### Noun

cul-de-sac m (plural culs-de-sac or cul-de-sacs or cul-de-sac)
* cul-de-sac; blind alley (street that leads nowhere)
    Synonyms: rua sem saída, beco sem saída
* cul-de-sac (circular area at the end of a dead end street)
* (figurative) cul-de-sac; dead end; impasse
    Synonyms: impasse, beco sem saída

## Spanish
### Alternative forms

* culdesac
* cul de sac

### Etymology

From French cul-de-sac, from cul (“bottom”) + de (“of”) + sac (“bag, sack”).

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˌkul ˌde ˈsak/ [ˌkul̪ ˌd̪e ˈsak]
* Syllabification: cul-de-sac

### Noun

cul-de-sac m (plural cul-de-sacs)
* cul-de-sac; blind alley (street that leads nowhere)
* cul-de-sac (circular area at the end of a dead end street)
* (figurative) cul-de-sac; dead end; impasse

#### Usage notes

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.