Meaning

A blind alley or dead end street..

Definitions by Sense

1. A blind alley or dead end street.
2. A circular area at the end of a dead end street to allow cars to turn around, designed so children can play on the street, with little or no through-traffic.
3. (figurative) An impasse.
4. (medicine, botany) A sacklike cavity, a tube open at one end only.

Example Sentences

Before we had gone fifty yards we perceived that all hopes of getting further up the stream in the whale-boat were at an end, for not two hundred yards above where we had stopped were a succession of shallows and mudbanks, with not six inches of water over them. It was a watery cul de sac.

His was the end house of a cul-de-sac, with the side wall of a huge brewery beyond.

And in suburbs known for new development, preservationists are often battling a general perception that there is nothing historic or worth saving among the cul-de-sacs.

Physics seems, in fact, to have got itself into a cul-de-sac, obsessing over theories so mathematically abstruse that nobody even knows how to test them.

The internet is a remarkable tool to find others and coordinate, but as an end to itself can become a cul de sac of frustrated desires and circular arguments.

Word Forms

• cul-de-sacs
• culs-de-sac
• culdesac
• cul de sac

Related Words

When Should You Use Cul-de-sac?

Use cul-de-sac when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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