frontage

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English

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Etymology

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From front +‎ -age.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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frontage (countable and uncountable, plural frontages)

  1. The front part of a property or building that faces the street.
    • 1885, William Dean Howells, chapter III, in The Rise of Silas Lapham[1]:
      Put your little reception-room here beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up the sides of it.
    • 1973, John Larkins, Australian Pubs, page 173:
      Hotel Corones, which has risen phoenix-like on the site of the old Norman Hotel, has a frontage of 210 feet[.]
    • 1981, Wole Soyinka, chapter I, in Aké: The Years of Childhood, New York: Vintage, published 1983, page 5:
      BishopsCourt appeared sometimes to want to rival the Canon's house. It looked a house-boat despite its guard of whitewashed stones and luxuriant flowers, its wooden fretwork frontage almost wholly immersed in bougainvillaea.
  2. The land between a property and the street.
  3. The length of a property along a street.
  4. Property or territory adjacent to a body of water.
    • 1939 June 12, Time:
      And here he brought up the entire subject of geopolitics in the Baltic, a sea which Germany in wartime must control to be able to assure herself of shipments of Swedish iron ore needed for her war factories, a sea on which Soviet Russia has a frontage of only 75 miles []
    • 2016 May 25, The Chronicle Herald:
      It is important to keep municipally owned land, especially lake frontage, in the hands of the municipality.
  5. The front part generally.
    • 1918, Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons[2], Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., published 1999:
      [] to the eyes of his mother and his aunt, who occupied wicker chairs at a little distance, he was almost indistinguishable except for the stiff white shield of his evening frontage.
    • 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 18, in Billy Budd[3], London: Constable & Co.:
      War looks but to the frontage, the appearance.
  6. (informal) A woman's breasts.
    • 2007, Dave Freer, Eric Flint, Pyramid Power:
      "Bes dear," said Throttler, patting her breasts. "Do you think I should get one of those boob-jobs?"
      Bes looked at his hands, at her frontage, at his hands. "They say that more than a handful is a waste."
    • 2008, Lynn Veach Sadler, Not Dreamt of in Your Philosophy, page 134:
      I'd go running in, pretend-breathless, nuzzle her neck, reach around to cup her frontage.

Synonyms

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Coordinate terms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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