aisle
Pluralaisles
Often confused with isle
- 1A clear passage running between or through rows of seats.
The older carriages had a narrow central aisle that made it hard to get past with luggage.
Latecomers edged along the aisle, searching for empty seats in the darkened theater.
Similargangway, passage, passageway
- 2A clear corridor in a supermarket, lined on both sides with shelves of goods for sale.
Cleaning supplies are at the far end of the aisle, past the paper towels.
The store widened its aisles so that shoppers with carts could pass each other.
- 3The path a wedding procession follows through a church or other venue; by extension, marriage itself.
The bride's grandmother wiped away tears as the couple walked back up the aisle.
After a decade of dating, the two of them finally made it to the aisle last spring.
Note
A wedding word that has grown into a word for marriage itself. Walking down the aisle is the ceremony; making it to the aisle means getting married at all, the sense The Five Satins sing in "To the Aisle" (1957), where each step draws the singer closer. It nearly always takes the, and keeps company with verbs of moving: walk, lead, make it.
- 4In US politics, the figurative divide between the Republican and Democratic parties, each said to sit on its own side.
The senator reached across the aisle to win support for the farm bill.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle condemned the attack.
Note
A figure of speech from American politics that lives almost entirely in set phrases: a lawmaker sits on one side of the aisle, wins votes from both sides of the aisle, or reaches across the aisle. Reaching across means working with the other party rather than against it, and the image is of a chamber where the two parties sit apart.
- 5A seat beside the aisle on a plane, train, bus, or other public transport.
When the agent asked window or aisle, he said aisle without hesitating.
On long flights she always books an aisle so she can stretch her legs.
Note
Shorthand for an aisle seat, heard mostly at booking time, where it pairs with window: "window or aisle?" Used on its own it behaves like any countable noun and takes an article, as in "I'd like an aisle, please," while the full phrase aisle seat means exactly the same.
- 6
- 7A wing of a building, especially one in a church that is separated from the nave proper by piers.
The medieval church has a nave with an aisle on either side, divided from it by heavy stone piers.
Memorial plaques to local families cover the walls of both aisles.
Note
The sense closest to the word's history: Middle English ele came through Middle French aisle, "wing", from Latin āla, so an aisle was first a wing of a building. In a church it names a side space set off from the nave by a row of piers, a part of the architecture rather than a walkway like the passage between seats.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English ele, from Middle French aisle ("wing"; modern French aile), from Latin āla, which is further traced to Latin axis. Through the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂eḱs- it is related to English axle and Ancient Greek ἄξων (áxōn).