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What is "alley"

Crossword clues for alley

alley
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
alley
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
alley cat
blind alley
▪ False information has led the police up a series of blind alleys.
bowling alley
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
back
▪ Then we took off down the back alleys in case some one saw us and told our parents.
▪ Give me a dark back alley compared with being a pinball in the gallery of the desperate.
▪ We exited into a back alley via the fire door.
▪ Riot police stood guard even in tiny back alleys.
▪ Fifteen months ago this was a place with one casino and a couple of back-alley betting shops.
▪ When the bars closed, she and her sister drove through back alleys hunting for him.
▪ When I woke up I was in some back alley.
▪ But then so am I if I saw a lion wandering around the back alleys of Danang, right?
blind
▪ Yet on several occasions when running out of defence he turned down blind alleys.
▪ Progress can not be made without exploring blind alleys.
▪ Dark passageways and blind alleys obscure the light at the end of the tunnel.
▪ If the police went charging up a blind alley as a result of her information, it wouldn't be her fault.
▪ Our analysis should clearly indicate the several blind alleys which Frey here explores.
▪ The echinoderms may seem, from a human point of view, to be a blind alley of no particular importance.
▪ This way of thinking has to be one of the blinder alleys that we have been led up by psychoanalysis.
dark
▪ I wouldn't like to be stuck down a dark alley at night with whoever put the boot in here.
▪ Give me a dark back alley compared with being a pinball in the gallery of the desperate.
▪ Rachel looks quietly excited, peering round this dark alley like it's the entrance to a new nightclub.
▪ We imagine our children being accosted in dark alleys and force-fed narcotics until their souls are no longer their own.
▪ That's where Desperate Dan, spying on the proceedings from a safe, dark alley, had got it wrong.
▪ You wouldn't want to meet her coming towards you down a dark alley.
little
▪ He went down the steps and through the little brick alley.
▪ There were little lamps illuminating the little rat alleys.
▪ We need this little private alley where we can meet.
narrow
▪ Graham and Slater walked down the narrow alley formed by the seedy, decaying stonework and the painted wood.
▪ We turned off the main street into a narrow, shaded alley.
▪ When she reached Soho, a policeman directed her to Manette Street; a narrow alley between two tall buildings.
▪ Then I reached a narrow alley full of large snowballs.
▪ Every road, every lane, even the narrowest of alleys was taken up with stalls.
▪ He threads his way through narrow alleys where the sun never penetrates.
▪ I'd overshot the narrow alley before it registered properly.
▪ She followed Will along the mean cobbled streets until he paused alongside a narrow alley.
■ NOUN
bowling
▪ The hotel also offers a three-lane bowling alley with a bar.
▪ In addition there is a billiard room, solarium, cinema, indoor and outdoor pools, bowling alley and gym.
▪ Downstairs is a Tyrolean-style bowling alley and cellar bar.
▪ There is a bowling alley near the station, and two minigolf courses.
cat
▪ He may have the morals of an alley cat but raping a semi-comatose girl was beyond him.
▪ I mercilessly left his fate in her hands; it was like leaving a goldfish in the care of an alley cat.
▪ Wise-guy Brooklyn alley cats had bread and dripping for tea, just as I did on Sunday evenings.
side
▪ When they returned Jenkins again led the way out into the side alley behind the bar.
▪ He turns down a small side alley where the scene is quieter, with fewer glaring neon signs and nude photo displays.
■ VERB
bowl
▪ When I return to the bowling alley, some kids are getting wild.
▪ The bowling alley fire in a neighboring town that killed five firemen when my father was deputy fire chief.
▪ The incident grew out of student efforts to integrate the local bowling alley.
▪ On Feb. 13, 1993, a massive brawl broke out in a Hampton, Va., bowling alley.
▪ So most of our bases have bowling alleys, and we built a bowling alley at this base.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A delivery truck blocked the alley.
▪ A narrow alley led up between the houses to the main street.
▪ Women in white aprons gossiped in the alley between the apartment blocks.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And being a dead end, the alley led to nowhere else.
▪ Back in the main town, we explored twisting alleys which eventually led us to the old Frankish quarter.
▪ Entry is gained from an alley on the side, so narrow that it can at best take a single car.
▪ It overlooked an alley, and the bay windows were sun-blocked by the townhouse at 93.
▪ Locals welcome any efforts to beautify the alleys.
▪ Meredith glanced up uncertainly at the four-storey buildings soaring up forbiddingly on either side of the alley where they were walking.
▪ Others went in alleys behind the buildings and lofted rocks and bottles over the roofs.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Alley

Alley \Al"ley\, n.; pl. Alleys. [OE. aley, alley, OF. al['e]e, F. all['e]e, a going, passage, fr. OE. aler, F. aller, to go; of uncertain origin: cf. Prov. anar, It. andare, Sp. andar.]

  1. A narrow passage; especially a walk or passage in a garden or park, bordered by rows of trees or bushes; a bordered way.

    I know each lane and every alley green.
    --Milton.

  2. A narrow passage or way in a city, as distinct from a public street.
    --Gay.

  3. A passageway between rows of pews in a church.

  4. (Persp.) Any passage having the entrance represented as wider than the exit, so as to give the appearance of length.

  5. The space between two rows of compositors' stands in a printing office.

Alley

Alley \Al"ley\, n.; pl. Alleys. [A contraction of alabaster, of which it was originally made.] A choice taw or marble.
--Dickens.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
alley

mid-14c., "passage in a house; open passage between buildings; walkway in a garden," from Old French alee (13c., Modern French allée) "a path, passage, way, corridor," also "a going," from fem. of ale, past participle of aler "to go," which ultimately may be a contraction of Latin ambulare "to walk," or from Gallo-Roman allari, a back-formation from Latin allatus "having been brought to" [Barnhart]. Compare sense evolution of gate. Applied by c.1500 to "long narrow enclosure for playing at bowls, skittles, etc." Used in place names from c.1500.\n

\nThe word is applied in American English to what in London is called a mews, and also is used there especially of a back-lane parallel to a main street (1729). To be up someone's alley "in someone's neighborhood" (literally or figuratively) is from 1931; alley-cat attested by 1890.

Related phrases:
Wiktionary
alley

Etymology 1 n. 1 A narrow street or passageway, especially one through the middle of a block giving access to the rear of lots or buildings. 2 (context baseball English) The area between the outfielders, the gap. 3 (context bowling English) An establishment where bowling is played; bowling alley. 4 (context tennis English) The extra area between the sidelines or tramlines on a tennis court that is used for doubles matches. 5 A walk or passage in a garden or park, bordered by rows of trees or bushes. 6 A passageway between rows of pews in a church. 7 (context perspective drawing English) Any passage having the entrance represented as wider than the exit, so as to give the appearance of length. 8 The space between two rows of compositors' stands in a printing office. Etymology 2

n. A glass marble or taw.

Related phrases:
WordNet
alley

  1. n. a narrow street with walls on both sides [syn: alleyway, back street]

  2. a lane down which a bowling ball is rolled toward pins [syn: bowling alley, skittle alley]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Alley

An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in the older parts of towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road ( back lane), or a path or walk in a park or garden.

A covered alley or passageway, often with shops, may be called an arcade. The origin of the word alley is late Middle English, from "walking or passage", from "go", from "to walk".

Alley (surname)

Alley is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

  • Allen Alley (born 1954), American businessman and politician
  • Candice Alley (born 1982), Australian singer-songwriter
  • Carroll Alley, American physicist
  • Don Alley (born 1945), American football player
  • Elizabeth Alley (1955–2013), American actress
  • Gene Alley (born 1940), American baseball player
  • Henry Alley (born 1945), American writer
  • Kim Alley, American modeling agent
  • Kirstie Alley (born 1951), American actress and comedian
  • Lindsey Alley (born 1977), American actress and singer
  • Louise Alley (1927-2015), American radio personality and advertising executive
  • Richard Alley (born 1957), American geologist
  • Rick Alley, American poet
  • Steve Alley (born 1953), American ice hockey player
  • T. W. Alley (born c. 1942), American football player and coach
  • Zeb Alley (1928–2013), American lawyer, lobbyist, and politician
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "alley".

Convinced I could see nothing, she led me down the alley, leading me like an aerialist beckoning on the high wire.

Tall, thin, and dark, Agaric used to walk in deep thought, with his breviary in his hand and his brow loaded with care, through the corridors of the school and the alleys of the garden.

I never came down into this part of town, Alec said, looking nervously around at the weathered building overhanging the street and the shadowed alleys between.

Stopping at the far end of the alley, Micum and Alec heard Alben cursing his befuddled servant.

To the west rose the laval peak of Ancon Hill, sitting above the blend of modern and Spanish colonial buildings, above the busy new roads and the ancient maze of alleys and bazaars, above the living pot-pourri of Mestizos and Negroes, Chinese, Hindus and Europeans.

In silence, the boys left the northern end of the alley and turned east on Auer Avenue, not an avenue at all but merely another residential street lined with houses and parked cars.

They began drifting back up the alley toward the Monaghan house and West Auer Avenue.

Jimmy hopped over the trickle of filth down the centre of the alley, nodded to the basher who stood just outside, polishing the brickwork with his shoulder, and pushed through the door.

He saw himself in the Pelek Baw alley, staring in disbelief at h depowered lightsaber.

So thick the branches and the leves grene, Beshaded all the alleys that there were, And midst of every arbour might be seen, The sharpe, grene, swete juniper, Growing so fair with branches here and there, That as it seemed to a lyf without, The boughs did spread the arbour all about.

But Bibi had nodded strong agreement with Taverik, and Marita went by that, bracing herself as she followed Taverik into the alley.

She ran to the end of the alley and was about to scale the ten-foot wire fence when the bleeper attached to her belt suddenly shrilled into life.

As Cat and Meg Garcia reached the spot, Bluey staggered out of the alley into the street, holding both hands against his chest.

Aubrey forgot his resolution not to hit a smaller man, and also calling upon his patron saints--the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World-- he delivered a smashing slog which hit the bookseller in the chest and jolted him half across the alley.

She need not traverse the boxwood alley, she could go around, past the garage and the toolshed.