street

Etymology

From Middle English strēt, from Old English strǣt, from Proto-West Germanic *strātu (“street”), an early borrowing from Late Latin (via) strāta (“paved (road)”), from Latin strātus, past participle of sternō (“stretch out, spread, bestrew with, cover, pave”), from Proto-Indo-European *sterh₃- (“to stretch out, extend, spread”). Cognate with Scots stret, strete, streit (“street”), Saterland Frisian Sträite (“street”), West Frisian strjitte (“street”), Dutch straat (“street”), German Low German Straat (“street”), German Straße (“street”), Swedish stråt (“way, path”), Icelandic stræti (“street”) (Scandinavian forms are borrowed from Old English), Portuguese estrada (“road, way, drive”), Italian strada (“road, street”). Related to Old English strēowian, strewian (“to strew, scatter”). More at strew. The vowel shifted from /aː/ in Latin to /æː/ in Old English (Anglo-Frisian brightening), /ɛː/ in Middle English, /eː/ in Early Modern English, and finally /iː/ in Modern English (the Great Vowel Shift).

noun

1. A paved part of road, usually in a village or a town.
   Walk down the street until you see a hotel on the right.
2. A road as above, but including the sidewalks (pavements) and buildings.
   I live on the street down from Joyce Avenue.
3. (specifically, US) The roads that run perpendicular to avenues in a grid layout.
4. Metonymic senses:
   1. The people who live in such a road, as a neighborhood.
   2. The people who spend a great deal of time on the street in urban areas, especially, the young, the poor, the unemployed, and those engaged in illegal activities.
   3. An illicit or contraband source, especially of drugs.
      I got some pot cheap on the street.
      The seized drugs had a street value of $5 million.
   4. (finance) Wall Street.
      Orders were reported to have increased 2% monthly, ahead of the 1.2% expected by the street.
      Professional services and other revenue made up $577 million, edging out street estimates for $541.4 million.
5. (attributive) Living in the streets.
   a street cat; a street urchin
6. (uncountable, slang) Streetwise slang.
   Toaster is street for guns. 2008, Andrew Fleming, Pam Brady, Hamlet 2, Focus Features
7. (figurative) A great distance.
   He's streets ahead of his sister in all the subjects in school.
   England were once again static in their few attacks, only Tuilagi's bullocking runs offering any threat, Flood reduced to aiming a long-range drop-goal pit which missed by a street. 2011, Tom Fordyce, Rugby World Cup 2011: England 12-19 France
8. (poker slang) Each of the three opportunities that players have to bet, after the flop, turn and river.
9. (uncountable, sports) A style of skateboarding featuring typically urban obstacles.

adj

1. (slang) Having street cred; conforming to modern urban trends.
   Eric had to admit that she looked street—upscale street, but still street. Kayla's look tended to change with the seasons; at the moment it was less Goth than paramilitary, with laced jump boots. 2003, Mercedes Lackey, Rosemary Edghill, James P. Baen, Mad Maudlin

verb

1. To build or equip with streets.
   After all, Thomas, in whose thinking Aristotle and Christ combine as never before or since, was censured by the Church, fortunately in absentia, after he had been " absented" from this little threshing floor, streeted with straw, our earth, and was, presumably, dwelling in beatific felicity, in any case, safe from Bishop Tempier. 1999, Ralph C. Hancock, America, the West, and Liberal Education, Rowman & Littlefield, page 89
   There is a cemetery next to the Mission, a small part of the huge one which was streeted over. 2011, Robert White, Romantic Getaways in San Francisco & the Bay Area, Hunter Publishing, Inc
2. To eject; to throw onto the streets.
   Stage doormen and all sorts of doormen are very quick at streeting a man who won't move fast. I know a well-known Irishman who at a New York theatre was streeted just because he was insisting on getting in when the house was apparently booked out. 1959, The Irish Digest
3. (sports, by extension) To heavily defeat.
   Wearing his custom-made silks, McCarthy duly rode the horse a treat as they streeted the opposition and helped connections clean up the bookies. 2002, John Maynard, Aborigines and the ‘Sport of Kings’: Aboriginal Jockeys in Australian Racing History, Aboriginal Studies Press, published 2013, part II, 96
   But when I came back in Round 14, the team had lost only two of those previous 13 games, we were sitting with Melbourne at the top of the premiership table and the two clubs had virtually streeted the rest of the competition. 2008, Steve Menzies, Norman Tasker, chapter 1, in Beaver: The Steve Menzies Story, Allen & Unwin, page 5
   Pennant winners Kansas City and nearest rivals St. Paul had streeted the Western League in 1901, but were brought back to the field in 1902 by a powerful Omaha outfit who just missed out on the pennant, their .600 win-loss percentage just outdone by Kansas City's .603. 2014, Rochelle Llewelyn Nicholls, Joe Quinn Among the Rowdies: The Life of Baseball's Honest Australian, McFarland & Company, Inc., part VI, chapter 14, 205
4. To go on sale.
   He points to the success of a recent Destiny's Child DVD that streeted just after member Beyonce's new solo CD 2003, Billboard, page 55
   “Family & Friends 5” was recorded last May in Detroit at Greater Grace Temple. The event was also taped for a DVD that streeted the same day as the CD. 2005-02-12, Deborah Evans Price, “Winans Ready To ‘Celebrate’ New Album After Illness”, in Billboard, volume 117, number 7, page 18
5. (Japanese Mormonism) To proselytize in public.
   A person I met streeting in Osaka told me the above Kanji examples as well as many others that I have since forgot. 2000, Dow Glenn Ostlund, The Lost Tribes of Isuraeru: Belief Tales Among Mormon Missionaries in Japan
   Although streeting or tracting, as the first two contacting methods are known, tend to produce negligible results when seen through a broad sociological lens, there was often something about meeting American missionaries that appealed to our Japanese Latter-day Saints. 2007, John Patrick Hoffmann, Japanese Saints: Mormons in the Land of the Rising Sun, Lexington Books, page 94
   They streeted the rest of the afternoon, and each picked up an intro lesson. They went back to the church after dinner. 2010, Eugene Woodbury, chapter 9, in Tokyo South, Peaks Island Press, page 86