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avenue

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈæv.əˌnjuː//
  • United States//ˈæv.əˌn(j)u//

A broad street, especially one bordered by trees or, in cities laid out in a grid pattern, one that is on a particular side of the city or that runs in a particular direction.

noun

  1. 1

    A broad street, especially one bordered by trees or, in cities laid out in a grid pattern, one that is on a particular side of the city or that runs in a particular direction.

    Finding an address east to west is fairly simple . The numbering begins at Central Avenue and moves logically and predictably either west through the avenues or east through the streets, so you know that 2400 East Camelback is at Twenty-Fourth Street or 4300 West Indian School is at Forty-Third Avenue .

    Boulevards typically (but not exclusively) go east to west; avenues usually run north to south.

    The City of New York implemented a unified street grid in Queens: Numbered avenues run east–west; numbered streets run north–south.

  2. 2

    A way or opening for entrance into a place; a passage by which a place may be reached; a way of approach or of exit.

    [S]ome have used to get on the top of the higheſt Steeple, vvhere one may vievv with advantage, all the Countrey circumjacent, and the ſite of the City, vvith the advenues and approaches about it; and ſo take a Landskip of it.

  3. 3

    The principal walk or approach to a house which is withdrawn from the road, especially, such approach bordered on each side by trees; any broad passageway thus bordered.

    They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past farm steadings, into the little village, through the silent churchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay, and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall.

  4. 4

    A method or means by which something may be accomplished.

    There are several avenues by which we can approach this problem.

    As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot.

    The main reason for this state of affairs is probably that, for the exceptionally able man who accepts the present order of society, a multitude of other avenues to influence and power are open, while to the disaffected and dissatisfied an intellectual career is the most promising path to both influence and the power to contribute to the achievement of his ideals.

    In the future, he says, a focus on the hate circuit may open new avenues for treatment – including new drugs and psychotherapies – that target this and other specific circuits in the brain.

Etymology

Borrowed from French avenue, from Old French avenue, feminine past participle of avenir (“approach”), from Latin adveniō, advenīre (“come to”, from ad (“to”) + veniō, venīre (“come”)).

Forms

plural
avenues
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).