main street

1. The principal street of a small town.

2. Main Street

a. Average businesses and households considered as a group.

b. The inhabitants of small US towns considered as having a narrow-minded or materialistic worldview.

[Sense 2b, after Main Street, a novel by Sinclair Lewis.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Main Street

1. the most prominent street of a town, usually where the principal shops and businesses are situated

2. ordinary people in general

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

main′ street`

1. the principal thoroughfare in a small town.

2. (caps.) the outlook, environment, or life of a small town.

[1735–45]

main•street

(ˈmeɪnˌstrit)
v.i.

Canadian. to campaign in an election by meeting the public along the main streets of towns and cities.

[1955–60]

main′street`er, n.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	main street - street that serves as a principal thoroughfare for traffic in a town high street main drag - the main street of a town or city street - a thoroughfare (usually including sidewalks) that is lined with buildings; "they walked the streets of the small town"; "he lives on Nassau Street"
	2.	Main Street - any small town (or the people who inhabit it); generally used to represent parochialism and materialism (after a novel by Sinclair Lewis); "Main Street will never vote for a liberal politician" town - an urban area with a fixed boundary that is smaller than a city; "they drive through town on their way to work"

Translations

Valtakatu

grand-rue

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

They sat by a window that looked over the roof of a small frame building into Main Street. By turning their heads they could see through an- other window, along an alleyway that ran behind the Main Street stores and into the back door of Abner Groff's bakery.

Over on Main Street sounded a man's voice, laughing.

Once she startled the town by putting on men's clothes and riding a bicycle down Main Street.

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The main street, one block back from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street.

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There might be ogres and giants under the stairs, --but, as I tell Hannah, there MIGHT be elves and fairies and enchanted frogs!--Is there a main street to the village, like that in Wareham?"

"I s'pose you might call it a main street, an' your aunt Sawyer lives on it, but there ain't no stores nor mills, an' it's an awful one-horse village!

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they're found!" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the popula- tion massed itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its home- ward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring huzzah after huzzah!

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A dozen rivals of Thompson's Saloon had sprung up along the narrow main street. There were two new hotels-- one a "Temperance House," whose ascetic quality was confined only to the abnegation of whiskey--a rival stage office, and a small one-storied building, from which the "Sierran Banner" fluttered weekly, for "ten dollars a year, in advance." Insufferable in the glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak, windy, and flaring in the gloom of a Sabbath night, and hopelessly depressing on all days of the week, the First Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from the barrenest area of the flats, and was hideous!

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When Archer walked down the sandy main street of St.

Early as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal greetings, and Archer longed to be alone with May, and to pour out all his tenderness and his impatience.

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I know the lawyers, editors, business men, local politicians, and the visiting ranchers, hunters, and miners, so that by evening, when Charmian and I stroll down the main street and back, she is astounded by the number of my acquaintances in that totally strange town.

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'He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into the main street, in which he stood alone.

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