MAIN STREET

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Main Street mean? 

• MAIN STREET (noun)
  The noun MAIN STREET has 2 senses:

1. street that serves as a principal thoroughfare for traffic in a town

2. any small town (or the people who inhabit it); generally used to represent parochialism and materialism (after a novel by Sinclair Lewis)

  Familiarity information: MAIN STREET used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MAIN STREET (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Street that serves as a principal thoroughfare for traffic in a town

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

high street; main street

Hypernyms ("main street" is a kind of...):

street (a thoroughfare (usually including sidewalks) that is lined with buildings)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "main street"):

main drag (the main street of a town or city)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any small town (or the people who inhabit it); generally used to represent parochialism and materialism (after a novel by Sinclair Lewis)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Context example:

Main Street will never vote for a liberal politician

Hypernyms ("Main Street" is a kind of...):

town (an urban area with a fixed boundary that is smaller than a city)

 Context examples 

“Well, Watson, what do you think of it?” Holmes asked, as we came out into the main street.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the main street.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last night's sleep.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Their road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane leading at right angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of the place; and, as may be inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr. Elton.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

We had raced over Crawley Down and into the broad main street of Crawley village, flying between two country waggons in a way which showed me that even now a driver might do something on the road.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Mush on, poor sore feets,” the driver encouraged them as they tottered down the main street of Skaguay.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

All day they swung up and down the main street in long teams, and in the night their jingling bells still went by.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)