dual carriageway
1
4.9
- noun
- /ˈdjuːəl ˈkærɪdʒweɪ/
- UK
:
autovía
- Be careful when crossing the dual carriageway, as the traffic can be quite fast and heavy.
Examples
-
It was just that initial, dual carriageway thing sort of put him off for a second.
-
Cala San Torre. "That's it!" They turned off the sun-baked dual carriageway and found themselves, abruptly, in a green and verdant countryside totally unlike the flat and exposed land through which they had been traveling.
Fiction book (1990) -
No, I don't remember a dual carriageway.
-
You know, there's that big dual carriageway when you get off the train?
-
The mid-morning traffic flows by on the dual carriageway.
Fiction book (2001) -
There's a dual carriageway, and doing 80 km/h on the outside lane is normal
Blog text (22) -
There's a dual carriageway, and doing 80 km/h on the outside lane is 'normal'.
Blog text (22) -
They swung over the ridge of Isle, and the car caromed down onto the dual carriageway.
Fiction book (1998) -
The mid-morning traffic flows smoothly along the dual carriageway as cars travel in both directions.
-
To reach the city quickly, we decided to take the dual carriageway instead of the smaller roads.
Synonyms
1
3.4
A road with a middle barrier that separates traffic going in opposite directions
How Wide
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'dual' means two and 'carriageway' denotes a section of road, so 'dual carriageway' straightforwardly denotes a road with two separate carriageways. This modifier+noun pattern is standard and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the meaning.
Etymology
Dual carriageway comes from the image of a road split into two carriageways. Dual means 'two' and carriageway was a 'road for carriages', so the term now means a highway with two separate roads carrying traffic in opposite directions, usually divided by a central strip for safety.