thoroughfare

plural thoroughfares · alternative thorofare · alternative throughfare · alternative obsolete thoroughfair · alternative obsolete thorowfair

1. countableuncountablenow rare except in certain set phrasesA passage; a way through.

   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.

   1974, John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

   1 more example

   “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’?”

   1961, Frederic Morton, The Rothschilds, page 173

2. countableuncountableA road open at both ends or connecting one area with another; a highway or main street.

   East [Street] and West Street form a single thoroughfare running as a backbone through the village, flanked by neat, painted cottages of predominantly 18th-century brick.

   1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 220, about Hambledon, Hants

   5 more examples

   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; […].

   1819, Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, Roscoe

   a dozen houses were quickly blazing, including those of Sir John Fielding and two other justices, and four in Holborn – one of the greatest thoroughfares in London – which were all burning at the same time, and burned until they went out of themselves, for the people cut the engine hose, and would not suffer the firemen to play upon the flames.

   1841, Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

   With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Local art is now a viable industry, and hundreds of islanders make a living in it. The thoroughfare of Oneroa village is lined with shops and galleries full of their work.

   2011 July 1, Stephen Phelan, The Guardian

   But the town handed Trump a rare defeat last week when town commissioners voted unanimously not to rename the island’s main thoroughfare from Gulf of Mexico Drive to Gulf of America Drive.

   2025 October 27, Joshua Benton, “Nine months later, that body of water down south is still the “Gulf of Mexico” to news outlets”, in NiemanLab, archived from the original on 29 Nov 2025

3. uncountableThe act of going through; passage; travel, transit.

   The sign leading to the other carriage reads: No thoroughfare.

   1 more example

   and made one realm, / Hell and this world, one realm, one continent / Of easy thorough-fare.

   1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 391-393

4. countableuncountableAn unobstructed waterway allowing passage for ships.