avenue

[ av-uh-nyoo, -noo ]
See synonyms for avenue on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a wide street or main thoroughfare.

  2. a means of access or attainment: avenues of escape; avenues to greater power.

  1. a way or means of entering into or approaching a place: the various avenues to India.

  2. Chiefly British.

    • a wide, usually tree-lined road, path, driveway, etc., through grounds to a country house or monumental building.

    • a suburban, usually tree-lined residential street.

Origin of avenue

1
First recorded in 1590–1600; from French, literally, “approach,” noun use of feminine past participle of avenir, from Latin advenīre “to come to.” See a-5, venue

synonym study For avenue

1. See street.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use avenue in a sentence

  • This apparition made its appearance in the dark evenings in the churchyard, and in several avenues about the place.

  • Not only is the garden full of such magnificent specimens, but there are beautiful avenues of them round the town.

  • One saw its offspring in the troops of thin white souls that hurry, like ghosts, down the avenues of Life.

  • She plunged back along one of the converging avenues, yielding to the fascination of green alleys leading one knows not whither.

  • The blank maze of tree trunks began to unravel into moss-strewn avenues.

    God Wills It! | William Stearns Davis

British Dictionary definitions for avenue

avenue

/ (ˈævɪˌnjuː) /


noun
    • a broad street, often lined with trees

    • (capital as part of a street name) a road, esp in a built-up area: Shaftesbury Avenue

  1. a main approach road, as to a country house

  1. a way bordered by two rows of trees: an avenue of oaks

  2. a line of approach: explore every avenue

Origin of avenue

1
C17: from French, from avenir to come to, from Latin advenīre, from venīre to come

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012