avenue
Pluralavenues
- 1A wide street, especially one lined with trees or, in a city laid out on a grid, one on a particular side of the city or running in a particular direction.
A broad avenue lined with old oaks leads from the station to the courthouse.
Downtown, the avenues run north and south, so you count the cross streets to know how far you have walked.
Similarboulevard
Note
In a grid city the word labels a direction or a side of town, and each city writes its own rule. Numbered avenues in Queens run east to west; in Los Angeles avenues usually run north to south; and one Arizona grid counts west through the avenues and east through the streets from Central Avenue. Learn the local rule before reading an address.
- 2A way or means by which something can be done or achieved.
Investigators are exploring every avenue that might explain the missing funds.
The grant could open new avenues of research into rare childhood diseases.
Similarway, route, path, option, channel
Note
Behind this sense is the picture of a way in, and the prepositions keep it: avenues to influence and power, new avenues for treatment, avenues of research. Avenues open and get explored, often every avenue at once. George Washington's Farewell Address (1796) already warns of foreign attachments as "avenues to foreign influence."
- 3The main walk or drive leading to a house set back from the road, especially one lined with trees on both sides; also any broad, tree-lined passage.
A mile-long avenue of lindens runs from the iron gates to the front steps of the house.
Across the park, the old path widens into an avenue of chestnut trees that slopes down to the lake.
Note
The trees usually get named, either in front, as in a beech avenue, or after of, as in an avenue of lindens or of chestnuts. Harold Bindloss's The Dust of Conflict (1907) shows the setting it belongs to: travelers tramp past farm steadings and through a village churchyard "and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall."
- 4A way or opening by which a place can be entered, reached or left; a route of approach or exit.
The pass through the hills offered the army its one avenue of approach to the city.
Engineers sealed the old mine shaft, closing the last avenue into the flooded tunnels.
Note
Here the word keeps its origin in plain view: French avenue is the feminine past participle of avenir, "to approach," from Latin advenīre, "to come to," so an avenue is at heart a way of arriving. It is followed by of or into, as in an avenue of approach or the last avenue into a tunnel, and it can name a way out as well as a way in.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from French avenue, from Old French avenue, the feminine past participle of avenir ("to approach"). This comes from Latin advenīre ("to come to"), formed from ad ("to") + venīre ("to come").