thoroughfare

Definition

A passage; a way through.

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”).

Example Sentences

• "“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’?”"
• "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."
• "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; […]."