Main Street is the metonym for a generic street name (and often the official name) of the primary retail street of a village, town or small city in many parts of the world. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in the central business district, and is most often used in reference to retailing and socializing.
The term is commonly used in the United States, less often in Canada, Australia, Ireland and extremely rarely in the United Kingdom where the common description is High Street. In Jamaica the term is Front Street. In some parts of South West of England the equivalent used is Fore Street.
In some larger cities, there may be several Main Streets, each relating to a specific neighborhood or formerly separate city, rather than the city as a whole. In many larger U.S. cities "Main Street" is a U.S. Highway, as the streets that helped develop the cities around were converted to highways.
Read more about Main Street: American Cultural Usage, International Use and Equivalents
Famous quotes containing the words main and/or street:
“—the main jet
Struggling aloft unti it seems at rest
In the act of rising, until
The very wish of water is reversed,”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It’s just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities.... Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)