Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

frontage en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /ˈfɹʌn.tɪd͡ʒ/
  • (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Etymology tree English front Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātus Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Latin -icus Latin -āticus Latin -āticum Old French -agebor. Middle English -age English -age English frontage From front + -age.

Meanings

  1. (countable, uncountable) The front part of a property or building that faces the street.
    • 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. 1885, William Dean Howells, chapter III, in The Rise of Silas Lapham:
    • Hotel Corones, which has risen phoenix-like on the site of the old Norman Hotel, has a frontage of 210 feet[.] 1973, John Larkins, Australian Pubs, page 173:
    • 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. 1981, Wole Soyinka, chapter I, in Aké: The Years of Childhood, New York: Vintage, published 1983, page 5:
  2. (countable, uncountable) The land between a property and the street.
  3. (countable, uncountable) The length of a property along a street.
  4. (countable, uncountable) Property or territory adjacent to a body of water.
    • 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 […] 1939 June 12, Time:
    • It is important to keep municipally owned land, especially lake frontage, in the hands of the municipality. 2016 May 25, The Chronicle Herald:
  5. (countable, uncountable) The front part generally.
    • War looks but to the frontage, the appearance. 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 18, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.:
    • […] 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. 1918, Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., published 1999:
  6. (countable, informal, uncountable) A woman's breasts.
    • I'd go running in, pretend-breathless, nuzzle her neck, reach around to cup her frontage. 2008, Lynn Veach Sadler, Not Dreamt of in Your Philosophy, page 134:
    • "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." 2007, Dave Freer, Eric Flint, Pyramid Power:
  7. (countable, uncountable) a front: a public and perhaps false face or façade to some hidden, covert reality.
    • Promises and oaths were nothing but a rather awkwardly construed frontage with which to cover up, and win time for, an even more inept intrigue contrived towards the breaking of all promises and all oaths. 1963 [2006], Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, page 95:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
frontages Number=Plur lexicographic

Coordinates

facade

Deriveds

frontager · waterfrontage · frontage road

Synonyms

breasts

Translations (10)

ru фаса́д (the front part of a property) · it facciata (the front part of a property) · de Fassade (the front part of a property) · cs průčelí (the front part of a property) · pl pierzeja (the front part of a property) · bg лицева страна (the front part of a property) · fi julkisivu (the front part of a property) · pl fronton (the front part of a property) · bg фасада (the front part of a property) · eo fronto (the front part of a property)