thoroughfare
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈθʌɹəfɛː/
Forms: form: thoroughfares
form: thorofare
form: throughfare
form: thoroughfair
form: thorowfair
Etymology: From Middle English thurghfare, corresponding to thorough- (“through”) + fare. Compare Old English þurhfaran (“to go through, go over, traverse, pierce, pass through, pass beyond, transcend, penetrate”). Compare also Old English þurhfær (“inner secret place”), German Durchfahrt (“passage through, thoroughfare”).
Senses: examples: text: “I ask you,” cried Lloyd George in 1909. “Are we to have all the ways of reform, financial and social, blocked simply by a notice board: ‘No thoroughfare. By order of Nathanial Rothschild’?”
ref: 1961, Frederic Morton, The Rothschilds, page 173:
text: In the scullery Smiley had once more checked his thoroughfare, shoved some deck-chairs aside, and pinned a string to the mangle to guide him because he saw badly in the dark.
ref: 1974, John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:
qualifier: now rare except in certain set phrases
glosses: A passage; a way through.
examples: text: a dozen houses were quickly blazing, including those of Sir John Fielding and two other justices, and four in Holborn – one of the greatest thoroughfares in London – which were all burning at the same time, and burned until they went out of themselves, for the people cut the engine hose, and would not suffer the firemen to play upon the flames.
ref: 1841, Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge:
text: With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London.
ref: 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
text: East [Street] and West Street form a single thoroughfare running as a backbone through the village, flanked by neat, painted cottages of predominantly 18th-century brick.
ref: 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 220, about Hambledon, Hants:
text: Local art is now a viable industry, and hundreds of islanders make a living in it. The thoroughfare of Oneroa village is lined with shops and galleries full of their work.
ref: 2011 July 1, Stephen Phelan, The Guardian:
text: Mr. Roscoe, on the contrary, has claimed none of the accorded privileges of talent. He has shut himself up in no garden of thought, no elysium of fancy; but has gone forth into the highways and thoroughfares of life; […].
ref: 1819, Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, Roscoe:
glosses: A road open at both ends or connecting one area with another; a highway or main street.
examples: text: The sign leading to the other carriage reads: No thoroughfare.
text: and made one realm, / Hell and this world, one realm, one continent / Of easy thorough-fare.
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 391-393:
glosses: The act of going through; passage; travel, transit.
glosses: An unobstructed waterway allowing passage for ships.