Great White Way
3
5.1
- noun
- /ɡreɪt waɪt weɪ/
:
Gran Vía Blanca
- The Great White Way is iconic for its bright lights and the excitement that fills the streets of Times Square.
- see the Great White Way
Examples
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Though the Great White Way stayed dark from Sunday night through Tuesday while New York City braced for Hurricane Sandy, the theater district believes that the time has come to turn on the marquee lights.
Blog text (28) -
It happens to be first act closer of Cleopatra, which happens to be the hottest ticket on the Great White Way.
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No skies of gray on that Great White Way.
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- Here's to your future... as the new white knight of the Great White Way.
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And while many of the shows that I was lucky enough to see are no longer playing, it goes to show you that amazing productions can be found off the Great White Way, as well as on it.
Blog text (22) -
This is Broadway, where behind the bright lights of the Great White Way is a world underpinned by craft.
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During the last three decades of his life, exactly two of his plays premiered on the Great White Way, 14 years apart, and both flopped.
Academic text (2005) -
Alone in the middle of the Great White Way, beggared by either bad luck or a pickpocket, reduced to a penny a piece.
Fiction book (1996) -
Both parents were violinists on the Great White Way, and his aunt's a concert promoter married to a theater manager in London.
Fiction book (2000) -
"Traffic was thinning out when we left the Emerald City and began a gentle glide down the Great White Way.
Fiction book (1995)
Synonyms
419
3.4
A street in Manhattan, New York, that has many major theaters
53
2.7
A busy part of Manhattan with bright lights, theaters, and New Year's Eve celebrations
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a conventionalized proper-name nickname for a specific stretch of Broadway and its theatrical lights; the literal parts ('great' + 'white' + 'way') do not directly indicate that cultural reference. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would likely infer something like a large or bright road but would not predict the specific meaning 'Broadway/theater district,' so the expression is idiomatic and not compositional.
Etymology
Great White Way may come from the very bright white electric lights that covered the theatres along that way, where 'way' means 'street'. That's why it now means the famous part of Broadway known for its bright lights and theatres.