History of the word street

Not to be confused with Strait.

A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable surface such as tarmac, concrete, cobblestone or brick. Portions may also be smoothed with asphalt, embedded with rails, or otherwise prepared to accommodate non-pedestrian traffic.

Originally, the word street simply meant a paved road (Latin: via strata). The word street is still sometimes used informally as a synonym for road, for example in connection with the ancient Watling Street, but city residents and urban planners draw a crucial modern distinction: a road’s main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction.^[1] Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and city-centre streets too crowded for road vehicles to pass. Conversely, highways and motorways are types of roads, but few would refer to them as streets.^[2][3]

Etymology[edit]

The word street has its origins in the Latin strata (meaning «paved road» – abbreviation from via strata^[4]); it is thus related to stratum and stratification. The first recorded use of word stratæ referring to the road has been made by the Eutropius.^[5] Ancient Greek stratos means army: Greeks originally built roads to move their armies. Old English applied the word to Roman roads in Britain such as Ermine Street, Watling Street, etc. Later it acquired a dialectical meaning of «straggling village», which were often laid out on the verges of Roman roads and these settlements often became named Stretton. In the Middle Ages, a road was a way people travelled, with street applied specifically to paved ways.^[6]

Role in the built environment[edit]

The street is a public easement, one of the few shared between all sorts of people. As a component of the built environment as ancient as human habitation, the street sustains a range of activities vital to civilization. Its roles are as numerous and diverse as its ever-changing cast of characters.

Streets can be loosely categorized as main streets and side streets. Main streets are usually broad with a relatively high level of activity. Commerce and public interaction are more visible on main streets, and vehicles may use them for longer-distance travel. Side streets are quieter, often residential in use and character, and may be used for vehicular parking.

Circulation[edit]

Circulation, or less broadly, transportation, is perhaps a street’s most visible use, and certainly among the most important. The unrestricted movement of people and goods within a city is essential to its commerce and vitality, and streets provide the physical space for this activity.

In the interest of order and efficiency, an effort may be made to segregate different types of traffic. This is usually done by carving a road through the middle for motorists, reserving pavements on either side for pedestrians; other arrangements allow for streetcars, trolleys, and even wastewater and rainfall runoff ditches (common in Japan and India). In the mid-20th century, as the automobile threatened to overwhelm city streets with pollution and ghastly accidents, many urban theorists came to see this segregation as not only helpful but necessary in order to maintain mobility.

Le Corbusier, for one, perceived an ever-stricter segregation of traffic as an essential affirmation of social order—a desirable, and ultimately inevitable, expression of modernity. To this end, proposals were advanced to build «vertical streets» where road vehicles, pedestrians, and trains would each occupy their own levels. Such an arrangement, it was said, would allow for even denser development in the future.

These plans were never implemented comprehensively, a fact which today’s urban^[who?] theorists regard as fortunate for vitality and diversity^[vague]. Rather, vertical segregation is applied on a piecemeal basis, as in sewers, utility poles, depressed highways, elevated railways, common utility ducts, the extensive complex of underground malls surrounding Tokyo Station and the Ōtemachi subway station, the elevated pedestrian skyway networks of Minneapolis and Calgary, the underground cities of Atlanta and Montreal, and the multilevel streets in Chicago.

Transportation is often misunderstood to be the defining characteristic, or even the sole purpose, of a street. This has not been the case since the word «street» came to be limited to urban situations, and even in the automobile age, is still demonstrably false. A street may be temporarily blocked to all through traffic in order to secure the space for other uses, such as a street fair, a flea market, children at play, filming a movie, or construction work. Many streets are bracketed by bollards or Jersey barriers so as to keep out vehicles. These measures are often taken in a city’s busiest areas, the «destination» districts, when the volume of activity outgrows the capacity of private passenger vehicles to support it. A feature universal to all streets is a human-scale design that gives its users the space and security to feel engaged in their surroundings, whatever through traffic may pass.

Vehicular traffic[edit]

Despite this, the operator of a motor vehicle may (incompletely) regard a street as merely a thoroughfare for vehicular travel or parking. As far as concerns the driver, a street can be one-way or two-way: vehicles on one-way streets may travel in only one direction, while those on two-way streets may travel both ways. One way streets typically have signs reading «ONE WAY» and an arrow showing the direction of allowed travel. Most two-way streets are wide enough for at least two lanes of traffic.

Which lane is for which direction of traffic depends on what country the street is located in. On broader two-way streets, there is often a centre line marked down the middle of the street separating those lanes on which vehicular traffic goes in one direction from other lanes in which traffic goes in the opposite direction. Occasionally, there may be a median strip separating lanes of opposing traffic. If there is more than one lane going in one direction on a main street, these lanes may be separated by intermittent lane lines, marked on the street pavement. Side streets often do not have centre lines or lane lines.

Parking for vehicles[edit]

Many streets, especially side streets in residential areas, have an extra lane’s width on one or both sides for parallel parking. Most minor side streets allowing free parallel parking do not have pavement markings designating the parking lane. Main streets more often have parking lanes marked. Some streets are too busy or narrow for parking on the side. Sometimes parking on the sides of streets is allowed only at certain times. Curbside signs often state regulations about parking. Some streets, particularly in business areas, may have parking meters into which coins must be paid to allow parking in the adjacent space for a limited time. Other parking meters work on a credit card and ticket basis or pay and display. Parking lane markings on the pavement may designate the meter corresponding to a parking space. Some wide streets with light traffic allow angle parking or herringbone parking.

Sidewalk and bicycle traffic[edit]

Sidewalks (US usage) or pavements (UK usage) are often located alongside on one or usually both sides of the street within the public land strips beyond the curbs. Sidewalks serve a traffic purpose, by making walking easier and more attractive, but they also serve a social function, allowing neighbors to meet and interact on their walks. They also can foster economic activity, such as window shopping and sidewalk cafes. Some studies have found that shops on streets with sidewalks get more customers than similar shops without sidewalks.^[7]

An important element of sidewalk design is accessibility for persons with disabilities. Features that make sidewalks more accessible include curb ramps, tactile paving and accessible traffic signals. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires accessibility improvement on new and reconstructed streets within the US.

In most jurisdictions, bicycles are legally allowed to use streets, and required to follow the same traffic laws as motor vehicle traffic. Where the volume of bicycle traffic warrants and available right-of-way allows, provisions may be made to separate cyclists from motor vehicle traffic. Wider lanes may be provided next to the curb, or shoulders may be provided.
Bicycle lanes may be used on busy streets to provide some separation between bicycle traffic and motor vehicle traffic.

The bicycle lane may be placed between the travel lanes and the parking lanes, between the parking lanes and the curb, or for increased safety for cyclists, between curb and sidewalk. These poorer designs can lead to Dooring incidents and are unsafe for cycling.

A more sensible design is found in the Netherlands with a Protected Bicycle Path totally separate from the traffic which is safe for cycling.

Tramlines[edit]

Trams are generally considered to be environmentally friendly with tramlines running in streets with a combination of tram lanes or separate alignments are used, sometimes on a segregated right of way.^[8] Signalling and effective braking reduce the risk of a tram accident.

Vehicular amenities and roadside hardware[edit]

Often, a curb (British English: Kerb) is used to separate the vehicle traffic lanes from the adjacent pavement area and where people on bicycles are considered properly are used to separate cycling from traffic as well. Street signs, parking meters, bicycle stands, benches, traffic signals, and street lights are often found adjacent to streets. They may be behind the sidewalk, or between the sidewalk and the curb.

Landscaping[edit]

There may be a road verge (a strip of grass or other vegetation) between the carriageway (North American English: Roadway) and the pavement on either side of the street on which Grass or trees are often grown there for landscaping. These are often placed for beautification but are increasingly being used to control stormwater.

Utilities[edit]

Although primarily used for traffic, streets are important corridors for utilities such as electric power; communications such as telephone, cable television and fiber optic lines; storm and sanitary sewers; and natural gas lines.

Street numbering[edit]

Practically all public streets in Western countries and the majority elsewhere (though not in Japan; see Japanese addressing system) are given a street or road name, or at least a number, to identify them and any addresses located along the streets. Alleys, in some places, do not have names. The length of a lot of land along a street is referred to as the frontage of the lot.^{[citation needed]}

Interaction[edit]

A street may assume the role of a town square for its regulars. Jane Jacobs, an economist and prominent urbanist, wrote extensively on the ways that interaction among the people who live and work on a particular street—»eyes on the street»—can reduce crime, encourage the exchange of ideas, and generally make the world a better place.

Identity[edit]

A street can often serve as the catalyst for the neighborhood’s prosperity, culture and solidarity. New Orleans’ Bourbon Street is famous not only for its active nightlife but also for its role as the center of the city’s French Quarter. Similarly, the Bowery has at various times been New York City’s theater district, red-light district, skid row, restaurant supply district, and the center of the nation’s underground punk scene. Madison Avenue and Fleet Street are so strongly identified with their respective most famous types of commerce, that their names are sometimes applied to firms located elsewhere. Other streets mark divisions between neighborhoods of a city. For example, Yonge Street divides Toronto into east and west sides, and East Capitol Street divides Washington, D.C. into north and south.

Some streets are associated with the beautification of a town or city. Greenwood, Mississippi’s Grand Boulevard was once named one of America’s ten most beautiful streets by the U.S. Chambers of Commerce and the Garden Clubs of America. The 1,000 oak trees lining Grand Boulevard were planted in 1916 by Sally Humphreys Gwin, a charter member of the Greenwood Garden Club. In 1950, Gwin received a citation from the National Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution in recognition of her work in the conservation of trees.^[9][10]

Streets also tend to aggregate establishments of similar nature and character. East 9th Street in Manhattan, for example, offers a cluster of Japanese restaurants, clothing stores, and cultural venues. In Washington, D.C., 17th Street and P Street are well known as epicenters of the city’s (relatively small) gay culture. Many cities have a Radio Row or Restaurant Row. Like in Philadelphia there is a small street called Jewelers’ row giving the identity of a «Diamond district». This phenomenon is the subject of urban location theory in economics. In Cleveland, Ohio, East 4th Street has become restaurant row for Cleveland. On East 4th is Michael Symon’s Lola Bistro and other restaurants.

As distinct from other spaces[edit]

A road, like a street, is often paved and used for travel. However, a street is characterized by the degree and quality of street life it facilitates, whereas a road serves primarily as a through passage for road vehicles or (less frequently) pedestrians. Buskers, beggars, boulevardiers, patrons of pavement cafés, peoplewatchers, streetwalkers, and a diversity of other characters are habitual users of a street; the same people would not typically be found on a road. A stroad is a thoroughfare that mixes the characteristics of a street and a road.

In rural and suburban environments where street life is rare, the terms «street» and «road» are frequently considered interchangeable. Still, even here, what is called a «street» is usually a smaller thoroughfare, such as a road within a housing development feeding directly into individual driveways. In the last half of the 20th century these streets often abandoned the tradition of a rigid, rectangular grid, and instead were designed to discourage through traffic. This and other traffic calming methods provided quiet for families and play space for children. Adolescent suburbanites find, in attenuated form, the amenities of street life in shopping malls where vehicles are forbidden.

A town square or plaza is a little more like a street, but a town square is rarely paved with asphalt and may not make any concessions for through traffic at all.

Nomenclature[edit]

There is a haphazard relationship, at best, between a thoroughfare’s function and its name. For example, London’s Abbey Road serves all the vital functions of a street, despite its name, and locals are more apt to refer to the «street» outside than the «road». A desolate road in rural Montana, on the other hand, may bear a sign proclaiming it «Davidson Street», but this does not make it a «street» except in the original sense of a paved road.

In the United Kingdom many towns will refer to their main thoroughfare as the High Street (in the United States and Canada it would be called the Main Street—however, occasionally «Main Street» in a city or town is a street other than the de facto main thoroughfare), and many of the ways leading off it will be named «Road» despite the urban setting. Thus the town’s so-called «Roads» will actually be more street-like than a road.

Some streets may even be called highways, even though they may carry no highway designation at all: This may arise when an historic road that was built to connect distant towns was named a «street» but originally never was in the truest sense. Some roads of this type which later became highways, became identified as said highway and may continue to colloquially be labelled as such from force of habit even if sections of it are subsequently urbanized and become an actual street and has its highway status decommissioned. Hurontario Street in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (which was formerly Ontario Highway 10, but predates it), is an example of this.

In some other English-speaking countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, cities are often divided by a main «Road», with «Streets» leading from this «Road», or the cities are divided by thoroughfares known as «Streets» or «Roads» with no apparent differentiation between the two. In Auckland, for example, the main shopping precinct is located around Queen Street and Karangahape Road.

Streets have existed for as long as humans have lived in permanent settlements (see civilization). However, the development of modern civilization in much of the New World was driven by transportation provided by motor vehicles. In some parts of the English-speaking world, such as North America, many think of the street as a thoroughfare for vehicular traffic first and foremost. In this view, pedestrian traffic is incidental to the street’s purpose; a street consists of a thoroughfare running through the middle (in essence, a road), and may or may not have pavements (or sidewalks) along the sides.

In an even narrower sense, some may think of a street as only the vehicle-driven and parking part of the thoroughfare. Thus, sidewalks (pavements) and road verges would not be thought of as part of the street. A mother may tell her toddlers, «Don’t go out into the street, so you don’t get hit by a car.»

Among urban residents of the English-speaking world, the word «street» appears to carry its original connotations (i.e., the facilitation of traffic as a prime purpose, and «street life» as an incidental benefit). For instance, a New York Times writer lets casually slip the observation that automobile-laden Houston Street, in lower Manhattan, is «a street that can hardly be called ‘street’ anymore, transformed years ago into an eight-lane raceway that alternately resembles a Nascar event and a parking lot.»^[11] Published in the paper’s Metro section, the article evidently presumes an audience with an innate grasp of the modern urban role of the street. To the readers of the Metro section, vehicular traffic does not reinforce, but rather detracts from, the essential «street-ness» of a street.

At least one map has been made to illustrate the geography of naming conventions for thoroughfares; avenue, boulevard, circle, road, street, and other suffixes are compared and contrasted.^[12]

Culture[edit]

Streets may be used as cultural spaces, for socializing and street parties, or for public festivals.

In India, some cities have designated one or more streets as «happy street» or «fun street», closing them for motor traffic for a few hours or a day, in order to make it possible for the inhabitants to use their street for recreational activities. Cities implementing this initiative include Kolkata^[13] Madurai,^[14] Visakhapatnam^[15] and Bengaluru.^[16]

In the United States, «open street» events have been arranged in Detroit^[17] and New York City.^[18]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• A virtual exhibition on the history of streets
• AskOxford: What is the difference between a ‘street’ and a ‘road’?
• streetnote, street music Live street music and musicians from the streets of the USA
• [1] Biannual exhibition of poetry and documentary about streets and traffic.
• Streetsblog – News focusing on streets and street life in the modern urban landscape. (No affiliation.)
• What distinguishes a street from a lane from a road from a boulevard, etc.? – An Ask Yahoo! editor’s examination of the issue.
• A Treatise on Highway Construction, Designed as a Text-book and Work of Reference for All who May be Engaged in the Location, Construction, Or Maintenance of Roads, Streets, and Pavements, By Austin Thomas Byrne, 1900 – Boston appears to be the first city in the United States to pave its streets, by 1663, many with pebbles.

Last Update: Jan 03, 2023

This is a question our experts keep getting from time to time. Now, we have got the complete detailed explanation and answer for everyone, who is interested!

Asked by: Dr. Julien Williamson DDS

Score: 4.5/5
(46 votes)

The word street originates with the Latin strata (initially, “paved”) and later strata via (“a way paved with stones”).

What is the origin of the English word street?

The word street has its origins in the Latin strata (meaning «paved road» — abbreviation from via strata); it is thus related to stratum and stratification. … Old English applied the word to Roman roads in Britain such as Ermine Street, Watling Street, etc.

Who created streets?

Two other Scottish engineers, Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam are credited with the first modern roads. They also designed the system of raising the foundation of the road in the center for easy water drainage.

How do streets get named?

In the United States, most streets are named after numbers, landscapes, trees (a combination of trees and landscapes such as «Oakhill» is used often in residential areas), or the surname of an important individual (in some instances, it is just a commonly held surname such as Smith).

Whats does street mean?

Street, alley, avenue, boulevard all refer to public ways or roads in municipal areas. A street is a road in a village, town, or city, especially a road lined with buildings. An alley is a narrow street or footway, especially at the rear of or between rows of buildings or lots.

26 related questions found

Asked by: Dr. Julien Williamson DDS

Score: 4.5/5
(46 votes)

The word street originates with the Latin strata (initially, “paved”) and later strata via (“a way paved with stones”).

What is the origin of the English word street?

The word street has its origins in the Latin strata (meaning «paved road» — abbreviation from via strata); it is thus related to stratum and stratification. … Old English applied the word to Roman roads in Britain such as Ermine Street, Watling Street, etc.

Who created streets?

Two other Scottish engineers, Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam are credited with the first modern roads. They also designed the system of raising the foundation of the road in the center for easy water drainage.

How do streets get named?

In the United States, most streets are named after numbers, landscapes, trees (a combination of trees and landscapes such as «Oakhill» is used often in residential areas), or the surname of an important individual (in some instances, it is just a commonly held surname such as Smith).

Whats does street mean?

Street, alley, avenue, boulevard all refer to public ways or roads in municipal areas. A street is a road in a village, town, or city, especially a road lined with buildings. An alley is a narrow street or footway, especially at the rear of or between rows of buildings or lots.

26 related questions found

As long as there were no towns, people did not need the word street. Yet in our oldest Germanic texts, streets are mentioned. It is no wonder that we are not sure what exactly was meant and where the relevant words came from. Quite obviously, if a word’s meaning is unknown, its derivation will also remain unknown. Paths existed, and so did roads. Surprisingly, the etymology of both words (path and road) is debatable. This holds even for road, which looks perfectly transparent (isn’t a road a place meant for riding? See the post for 20 August 2014). Path is even more obscure (see the post for 4 November 2015). As could be expected, there is no native Common Germanic word for “street.”

Today’s definition of street is less straightforward than one can expect (the pun, though unintentional, was too apt to sacrifice). I am quoting The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology: “… paved road, highway (surviving in names of ancient roads such as Watling Street); road in a town or village.” Engl. street, like its cognates in Dutch and German (straat, Straße), goes back to Latin strata, a feminine adjective, part of the phrase via strata “straight way.” Italian strada and Spanish estrada are derived from the same source.

In English, the word is old and occurs, among others sources, in Beowulf. Even though the date of the poem is a matter of contention, there is, I think, enough reason to believe that the text was composed in the eighth century and reflects the realities of that time (the manuscript is two centuries later, and the action seems to be set in the early 700’s).The poet informs us that the “street” (strǣt) Beowulf and his companions rode to the king’s palace was stānfāh, that is, embellished with stones, most likely, paved. In any case, it was not lined with houses. In the same poem, the word strǣt occurs as the second element of two compound nouns designating “way across the sea.” It follows that the strǣt did not have to be “straight.”

From the fourth century CE we have part of the New Testament translated into Gothic, a Germanic language, now dead. In the extant part of the text, the translator (Bishop Wulfila) needed the word for “street” twice. Here are the relevant passages from the Authorized Version. Luke XIV: 21: “Get out quickly into streets and lanes of the city….”; and M VI: 5: “…for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets….” Wulfila used different words for “street,” though in the Greek text, the word was the same, namely plateîa, a feminine adjective, like Latin strata, with the noun following it (hodós) implied. In Classical Greek, hodós meant “way,” while “street” was only one of the word’s senses.  Engl. hodology, if you are interested, means “study of pathways.” (For “lanes” older Biblical Greek has hrúmas, approximately, “narrow streets”; the Gothic gloss for it is staigos “paths.”)

In the first passage, Gothic has gatwo, and in the second, plapjo. Wulfila was a translator of great talent, and his choice of words was remarkable. Obviously, he did not equate “streets and lanes” with the “corners of the streets.” He seems to have needed a derogatory term for those corners, but no one knows anything about his plapjo. A place where people’s tongues went “plap-plap,” that is, where passers-by “blabbered”? A sound-symbolic or sound-imitative piece of Gothic slang? We will leave hypocrites to their own devices, let them pray at the crossroads, in the hedges, or wherever they wish, and turn to gatwo. Despite some phonetic difficulties, which I’ll pass by, gatwo is probably a cognate of (Old) Icelandic gata, known to many from Modern Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish gata ~ gate ~ gade.

This brings us to Engl. gate. There are two words, spelled and pronounced as gate. One means “street,” again surviving in place names. It also meant “journey” and “manner of going,” familiar to us from gait (which is another spelling of the same word; no connection with gaiters!).  This gate appeared only in Middle English and is, almost certainly, a borrowing of Scandinavian gata. Even if we assume that gata and Gothic gatwo are related, we will still know next to nothing about their etymology. However, the Gothic word held enough appeal to its neighbors to be taken over into the Baltic languages. In Latvian, it exists almost in its primordial form (gatwa); the Lithuanian form is nearly the same.

Sometimes the impression is that with gata, gatwo, and the rest the situation is the same as with path. It is as though we are dealing with a migratory Eurasian word. First, there is another and much more familiar Engl. gate “a hinged barrier” (the family names Yeats and Yates go back to this word).  Its cognates usually mean “gap, hole, opening; anus.” More important, in Sanskrit and Avesta, gātù– designated “way, path,” seemingly from “path across a swamp,” and in Slavic, gat’ and other forms like it mean “dam, dyke; rubble; brushwood, etc.” All of them refer not so much to impassable places as to the means of crossing them.  Engl. gat¹ and gat² are believed to be unrelated.

Numerous ingenious attempts have been made to explain the origin of gatwo. Perhaps ga– is a prefix (such a prefix existed; German ge– in genug and e- in its English congener enough are the relics of ga– ~ ge-). Or –two may have something to do with the numeral two (“a passage between two sides”?). Conversely, ga– may be a stub of the word for “go.” Those are the most attractive of the many hypotheses offered in the past. Modern dictionaries only say mournfully: “An obscure word” or “Origin unknown.”

In all probability, the Germanic word for “street” (gatwo and its look-alikes) referred to some passage. German has the expected word Straße “street” and Gasse, a cognate of Engl. gate “street,” and it means “a small street; lane.” But Wulfila used staigos for the “lanes” of the Authorized Version. If he were writing Modern German, he would probably have said: “Straßen und Gassen.” It would be good to get some help from the etymology of the word lane. This word is old and has cognates in Old Frisian, Dutch (both Middle and Modern), and Scandinavian. Characteristically, in Old Icelandic, it meant “barn; great heap; row of houses,” and “street.” Once again we have to conclude that “street” is not the word’s original meaning, but one wonders what “barn” and “heap” have to do with a row of houses. The Icelandic house was made up of several sections; one was meant for the sheep that warmed the place in winter by their breath. Hence “row of houses” and “heap”? In Old English, lane sounded as lane (two syllables!) and lanu, and this is all we know about it. The suggested etymologies are uninspiring, to say the least.

It must have been hard to be streetwise in the Germanic-speaking world two thousand years ago and some time later. One is left with the conclusion that, except for street, which is a borrowing, we have no clue to the words so important for the history of medieval material culture.

Featured Image Credit: This is an Icelandic house. Is the way from it to our street straight? Image credit: Turf roof of Glaumbaer, Iceland by TommyBee. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Whence comes the name of that word?As first «street» appeared in the Russian language?The answer lies in the etymology.It remains only to find out why the street is so named.Let us examine this matter.

What street

dictionary defines the street as a passage between the two buildings.It can be like driving and walking.

Street — this is what is between the houses occupied space.If no nearby buildings, it is determined by the presence of static objects located at a finite distance from each other.

These sites can be created in large and small cities and in the villages, towns, on farms.

street in simple everyday designation is considered to be something that is outside of buildings.

They come in several forms.The city is required to allocate:

• main streets;

• line local and district;

• residential;

• intra- and mezhdukvartalnye;

• hiking for people;

• tram to rail transport;

• deadlock that end wall or fence of the building;

• cycling — for it allowed travel by bicycle.

in the village, as a rule, no such units.Street can be: the main, pedestrian or travel.In small villages there is one street.

But it concerns direct purpose hard surface.And whence came the word, who proposed to introduce it in the lexicon?

origin of the word

Why street called street?Words become a single root «naulok» and «lane».The most banal and simple explanation can be formed when a person begins to disassemble them for parts.Most people still believe that the so-called street, as it is located literally ‘the person’ homes.And this version can exist as it partly reflects the location.But she was wrong.

What does the word before?

Street dates back to ancient times.And then the gaps between the buildings said to be almost the same.Why

street called street?The roots of the word are not Russian, they are Old Slavic.»Ula» — a ditch or a passage open space.The ancestors of modern humans called these words a place where nothing grew, not standing houses.It was a wasteland.

The peoples in the Indo-European linguistic plane was its cognates.In Greece, a cavity called the aulos.In the Westphalian language, when pointed at the meadow, said aul.Now it becomes more than clear why the street was named street.

Externally street may vary depending on the urban sprawl, the changes in it.It can build up and make the park on the site.

types streets

There are different versions of the streets.The space between the buildings is called differently, depending on the width, the length, the purposes for which it serves:

• street, on both sides surrounded by greenery, is called an alley, they are often created in the parks;

• Boulevard styled spacious area with benches, trees and maybe even alleys;

• road intended for transport;

• ring is the one street that has a corresponding shape;

• trunk — busy road;

• lane — is the distance between the great outdoors;

• embankment — the area between the houses and the water body;

• Avenue runs straight, very wide.

Usually each street for greater ease of recognition has its own name.Names can be stored for a long time and dates back to pre-revolutionary Russian life.

Why so called street

There’s a whole science which is engaged in research of the old name, origin streets.It called the place names.

basic ideas for street names:

• names of political leaders;

• name of the park;

• names of trees that are planted near;

• monuments or churches that are on the street;

• name of the outstanding scientist, an artist, a painter, a writer, a poet who lived there;

• indication of the geographical location.

Why not call out the name of a famous person?Some people claim that private call a spade — a bad omen.Others say that while she surname begins to fade, it is repeated many times, and not always in a positive way.The memory of the man will be erased.It remains a daily sense of place.

After the political regime overthrown, the streets can be renamed, as former party ideologues cause irritation.In addition, the old names are forgotten.Contemporaries did not know after whom was called before one or another section of the city.

Two names of one street

In many cities, there are two names.Locals call the same name, and the authorities in their lists of approved more.

Recently, there is a tendency to rename streets, returning them to their legal names associated with a long history.

For example, the tourists are wondering why the Kursk streets have two names.The fact is that the city authorities have conceived a long time to return the old names.They even created a special commission, which was to search for ancient names.

Nevertheless, it turned out that is not so easy to overcome the bureaucratic procedures.Officially, all the names are the same as they were.The process is extremely slow.They even understand why the street was called street-so, and the other renamed so.Every year more and more people begin to get confused, created confusion.

Historians studying the emergence and development of cities, have expressed the hope that the last name will be back soon.