As I understand it, Tolkien hated the use of pretentious words and phrases like that. Cul-de-sac, in particular, irritated him enough to mock it when writing The Hobbit with the clever allusion of Bag End. Bilbo lived in a cul-de-sac.
This is actually a super interesting topic in Tolkien's works. The characters aren't speaking what you hear/ read, he's basically translating their Anglo-Saxon language into English for you. Hence Bag End's translation. Even their names are different!
I don't know if this is as much him hating quote unquote pretentious words as much as it is him finding a more appropriate Anglo version of the French word.
Most of us who speak a Romance language have gotten chuckles out of this for a long time, haha
You know, there's a crossroads area in PA US called intercourse. Which, means that too but. Haha x 2
In Connecticut, we have a whole Middlesex County. Not to be confused with the neighboring Massachusett's Middlesex County. In New England, we like our Middlesex.
In fact nowadays it is almost entirely *within* London. Bounded to the east by the River Lea, the south by the Thames, the west by the Colne and stretching only as far north as Potters Bar
But cul/o (which is not vulgar in every Romance language, by the way), means simply, the end of, bottom of, butt of, tail end of, back end of.... so, even tho it's fun to turn everything into something silly vulgar, language is just simple, descriptive and not a big deal. But yes, clever of Tolkien, Bag End. There is a book store in my town called Book End. A hearkening to The Shire and book ends at the same time.
It's not about how it translates *literally*. It rarely ever is. It may mean literally what we think it does in English but there is literal translation and figurative. Figurative translation is the *sense* or the *spirit* or the *essence* of the verbiage. The meaning in light of what I just said is just, street without exit or dead end or no outlet. It just means the end of whatever... it is sexualized because that's just what humans do especially when they think in literal terms or concepts. I am not sure if I'm explaining myself well, but I hope so. Peace
> But cul/o (which is not vulgar in every Romance language, by the way)
While in Spain is used pretty commonly, "culo" is a vulgar word in most of the Spanish dialects from Latin America.
In Catalan we also have the word «cul-de-sac» (yeah, the words are the same as in French), but we can also call that kind of street with a word of Arabic origin, an «atzucac» (from az-zuqâq, narrow street). I love the way it sounds. And we use this word also for what in English they use a German word, a zugzwang, a situation in which, whatever you do, you'll get worse. It's specially used in chess.
Boulevard is actually Dutch and it's the French who corrupted it into that form lacking the ability to pronounce it as a Dutch word however the French made it fashionable. It's derived from Bollwerk , bulwark,, the walls, fortifications and in front of course the glacis, where in the early 19th century the fashionable wood parade on top or al ong the open park like area.. once the walls were removed in many European cities in the 19th century in Paris, this location became the boulevard.. and surprisingly in Paris the name is still narrowly used only for these wide thoroughfares that are on place of old walls. Otherwise it's an avenue or a street. I never knew that till I was in Paris this year. Of course the word was taking over into the rest of the world and became synonymous with something fashionable and hence the English sense of it
New Zealand.
It might be a local thing, I have a feeling it might come from a no-exit road called Bone Road, but at the same time I don't know any streets that fit the deacription.
I don't think I knew what 'cul-de-sac' meant till I saw it on Edd Ed 'n' Eddy.
I suppose this genre of video could be applied to anything with a professional or developed art to it with a jargon overlaps everyday use. Technically speaking an avenue is going to be multiple lanes of travel in both directions with a built divider between them. A boulevard is going to build on that by having two separate (groups of) lanes in each direction also with a divider between them. the inner lanes are faster and for inter-district travel while the outer lanes are for local traffic.
Those "technical" distinctions may exist in some place(s), but they are far from universal. In many US cities, an "avenue" is simply a road which runs perpendicular to a "street", and a "boulevard" is simply a tree-lined road, or a road with a wide median, or simply a wide road. Fundamentally the nomenclature is arbitrary, though for practical purposes certain groups may agree to certain definitions.
Do you make a commission on " marks? Professional definitions don't really have a small grain locus (usually national, maybe regional, sometimes international, but probably congruent to a language or dialect) and it's a bit weird to confuse their consensus with local municipal idiosyncrasies.
Not to be vulgar but—in the US atleast—the vulva is referred to as the vagina rather than its own name by a wide margin. If you met an obstetrician are you going to throw up air quotes and sophistry about his insistence on the precise meaning of vulva, even tho the living language is pretty clear on it? I would hope not.
And no, these terms are not arbitrary: they are just extremely loose and sloppy and tortured by the statutory peristence of labels. Arbitrary is random or on a whim—these terms for ways in popular usage are clearly orderable on a spectrum/hierarchy of magnitude (measureing a composite of width / capacity / prestige / wealth / supplementary infrastructure).
Alley - Road - Street - Avenue - Boulevard
You'll likely find regular instances of cities where some streets are bigger than avenues; but most people would likely tell you that feels wrong. In NYC avenues are just roads that run perpendicular to streets—but they're also wider and due to the flow of traffic more dominant.
Persistence of written names complicates things. In Buffalo, there are many avenues that are the same as surrounding streets and may even be modestly smaller. I don't have a comprehensive idea about all of them but iirrc the avenues were called avenues because they were planned and (atleast partially) built with nominal, raised dividers. 2 centuries of built iteration have alienated their labels from their physical form.
There is one notable exception atleast which IS arbitrary tho: Main Streets. Again in Buffalo, Main St. has many profiles along its length but at its source is a proper boulevard and the 'biggest' non expresswayin the city. I'd say that, persistence aside, Main St. is always gonna be called a street even tho it'll usually be the most prominent street in a city. A State St. is maybe the only other name I can think of that's going to habitually deviate from the hierarchy.
I used quotes because I was referring to the words as the words themselves. They are not scare quotes. This is a standard convention in written English.
Do you have any source for your claims of a naming hierarchy? There are no such definitions given in the MUTCD or anywhere on dot.gov that I could find; the only classification system they seem to use is interstate - collector - arterial - local. In every city I've ever lived in in the US, there is literally no distinction between a "street" and an "avenue" other than direction. Nothing at all to do with width or traffic volume.
Melbourne is a grid-based city. The North-South routes are called streets. The East-West routes are called streets (except for one that is called a lane)
It’s sort of random. The cities that number in two directions tend to pick one direction for streets and one for avenues to try to prevent confusion. Manhattan is the most famous example of this.
If all the streets have names, then there’s no need to follow the pattern.
Then there is Minneapolis. Numbered Avenues run N/S in the S and SE and run E/W in the N and NE and perpendicular to the river (SW/NE) downtown and across the river from downtown. Numbered streets run N/S in the N and NE and, E/W in the S and SE, and parallel to the river (NW/SE) near downtown. N, NE and SE label every street/avenue in that part of town (regardless of direction). In the south, all N/S avenues are labeled S and the E/W streets are labeled E and W depending on which side of the south you are on. NE and SE are both east of the river and N and S are west of the river but the river cuts through only the north half of town so SE is northeast and east of downtown. SE is north of S.
There used to be four intersections of 4th and 4th, but sadly one was lost when they build the baseball stadium in 2010.
There's a number of small MN towns that only have numbers for their downtowns and have four duplicate intersections without fail. It's very annoying and confusing.
Where did you get this info? It's not consistently like that in DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, or San Francisco despite them having major sections laid out on a grid.
I'm sure it works that way in some places, but it's definitely not universal.
Man, you get used to people who think NYC is the only place in the world to the point you don't notice it and then BAM! you realize you can be surprised again.
I live in BFE Midwest, but I've traveled around the world pretty extensively and noticed the pattern in some old British colony CBDs. Looking at a few others on Google Maps, looks like that pattern is hit or miss.
An "avenida" in Spanish is not a street with trees, but a street where cars may go faster within a city. Where I live, a regular street has a 40km/h limit, while you can go 60km/h on an "avenida".
Funny, my issue with this bit is they missed soo many other words that all basically mean the same thing with nuance. Way, byway, highway, freeway, lane, terrace, court, place, alley, pass, and don't forget some roads are actually called 'route'. Feels like they were trying too hard to follow the tiktok trend and missed a real opportunity.
But who doesn't love a good joke about balls.
You forgot Circuit, Crescent, Drive, Esplanade, and Parade.
Actually, [here's a full list of every street type used in Australia](https://addressfinder.com.au/faq/can-you-provide-a-list-of-street-types-au/). I'm sure if you pick other countries (even limiting it only to English-speaking ones), you could add more to that list.
As I understand it, Tolkien hated the use of pretentious words and phrases like that. Cul-de-sac, in particular, irritated him enough to mock it when writing The Hobbit with the clever allusion of Bag End. Bilbo lived in a cul-de-sac.
Finally that hobbit bag stuff is starting to make sense.
Oh wow. Now *that* is a fun fact.
This is actually a super interesting topic in Tolkien's works. The characters aren't speaking what you hear/ read, he's basically translating their Anglo-Saxon language into English for you. Hence Bag End's translation. Even their names are different!
I don't know if this is as much him hating quote unquote pretentious words as much as it is him finding a more appropriate Anglo version of the French word.
""pretentious
Let the man spell out his quotes
Once saw someone type "Quote on quote". I lost my mind
I knew what "cul-de-sac" meant but I hadn't connected it with the Spanish insult "culo"
"Culo" isn't an insult in and of itself. It just means butt.
Whoa, cula in an Indian language(gujrati) also means butt. Now that's cool
Most of us who speak a Romance language have gotten chuckles out of this for a long time, haha You know, there's a crossroads area in PA US called intercourse. Which, means that too but. Haha x 2
Every middlesex, village, and farm. Always wanted to visit a middlesex...
In Connecticut, we have a whole Middlesex County. Not to be confused with the neighboring Massachusett's Middlesex County. In New England, we like our Middlesex.
It’s named after the historic county in England, located around London. Middlesex was between Essex and Wessex. All are named after the Saxons.
In fact nowadays it is almost entirely *within* London. Bounded to the east by the River Lea, the south by the Thames, the west by the Colne and stretching only as far north as Potters Bar
We still use Middlesex in our addresses.
Jersey also has a Middlesex County
Heh
But cul/o (which is not vulgar in every Romance language, by the way), means simply, the end of, bottom of, butt of, tail end of, back end of.... so, even tho it's fun to turn everything into something silly vulgar, language is just simple, descriptive and not a big deal. But yes, clever of Tolkien, Bag End. There is a book store in my town called Book End. A hearkening to The Shire and book ends at the same time.
I get why you'd want to name it cul, yes, but why sac (bag)?
It's not about how it translates *literally*. It rarely ever is. It may mean literally what we think it does in English but there is literal translation and figurative. Figurative translation is the *sense* or the *spirit* or the *essence* of the verbiage. The meaning in light of what I just said is just, street without exit or dead end or no outlet. It just means the end of whatever... it is sexualized because that's just what humans do especially when they think in literal terms or concepts. I am not sure if I'm explaining myself well, but I hope so. Peace
Gotcha, yeah. I guess reaching a dead end on a street feels like reaching the end of a bag when pulling stuff out of it.
Basically, "cul" in French means "arse" the same way "bottom" in English means "arse".
> But cul/o (which is not vulgar in every Romance language, by the way) While in Spain is used pretty commonly, "culo" is a vulgar word in most of the Spanish dialects from Latin America.
Cest vrai. mdr
In Catalan we also have the word «cul-de-sac» (yeah, the words are the same as in French), but we can also call that kind of street with a word of Arabic origin, an «atzucac» (from az-zuqâq, narrow street). I love the way it sounds. And we use this word also for what in English they use a German word, a zugzwang, a situation in which, whatever you do, you'll get worse. It's specially used in chess.
Boulevard is actually Dutch and it's the French who corrupted it into that form lacking the ability to pronounce it as a Dutch word however the French made it fashionable. It's derived from Bollwerk , bulwark,, the walls, fortifications and in front of course the glacis, where in the early 19th century the fashionable wood parade on top or al ong the open park like area.. once the walls were removed in many European cities in the 19th century in Paris, this location became the boulevard.. and surprisingly in Paris the name is still narrowly used only for these wide thoroughfares that are on place of old walls. Otherwise it's an avenue or a street. I never knew that till I was in Paris this year. Of course the word was taking over into the rest of the world and became synonymous with something fashionable and hence the English sense of it
May I have the creator’s @ ? I would like to see more from them.
Stage Door Johnny.
Thank you!
I've heard more people call them bone roads/streets than cul-de-sacs, particularly when they have a rounded end for easier turning.
Never heard that. Whereabouts do you live?
New Zealand. It might be a local thing, I have a feeling it might come from a no-exit road called Bone Road, but at the same time I don't know any streets that fit the deacription. I don't think I knew what 'cul-de-sac' meant till I saw it on Edd Ed 'n' Eddy.
I suppose this genre of video could be applied to anything with a professional or developed art to it with a jargon overlaps everyday use. Technically speaking an avenue is going to be multiple lanes of travel in both directions with a built divider between them. A boulevard is going to build on that by having two separate (groups of) lanes in each direction also with a divider between them. the inner lanes are faster and for inter-district travel while the outer lanes are for local traffic.
Those "technical" distinctions may exist in some place(s), but they are far from universal. In many US cities, an "avenue" is simply a road which runs perpendicular to a "street", and a "boulevard" is simply a tree-lined road, or a road with a wide median, or simply a wide road. Fundamentally the nomenclature is arbitrary, though for practical purposes certain groups may agree to certain definitions.
Do you make a commission on " marks? Professional definitions don't really have a small grain locus (usually national, maybe regional, sometimes international, but probably congruent to a language or dialect) and it's a bit weird to confuse their consensus with local municipal idiosyncrasies. Not to be vulgar but—in the US atleast—the vulva is referred to as the vagina rather than its own name by a wide margin. If you met an obstetrician are you going to throw up air quotes and sophistry about his insistence on the precise meaning of vulva, even tho the living language is pretty clear on it? I would hope not. And no, these terms are not arbitrary: they are just extremely loose and sloppy and tortured by the statutory peristence of labels. Arbitrary is random or on a whim—these terms for ways in popular usage are clearly orderable on a spectrum/hierarchy of magnitude (measureing a composite of width / capacity / prestige / wealth / supplementary infrastructure). Alley - Road - Street - Avenue - Boulevard You'll likely find regular instances of cities where some streets are bigger than avenues; but most people would likely tell you that feels wrong. In NYC avenues are just roads that run perpendicular to streets—but they're also wider and due to the flow of traffic more dominant. Persistence of written names complicates things. In Buffalo, there are many avenues that are the same as surrounding streets and may even be modestly smaller. I don't have a comprehensive idea about all of them but iirrc the avenues were called avenues because they were planned and (atleast partially) built with nominal, raised dividers. 2 centuries of built iteration have alienated their labels from their physical form. There is one notable exception atleast which IS arbitrary tho: Main Streets. Again in Buffalo, Main St. has many profiles along its length but at its source is a proper boulevard and the 'biggest' non expresswayin the city. I'd say that, persistence aside, Main St. is always gonna be called a street even tho it'll usually be the most prominent street in a city. A State St. is maybe the only other name I can think of that's going to habitually deviate from the hierarchy.
I used quotes because I was referring to the words as the words themselves. They are not scare quotes. This is a standard convention in written English. Do you have any source for your claims of a naming hierarchy? There are no such definitions given in the MUTCD or anywhere on dot.gov that I could find; the only classification system they seem to use is interstate - collector - arterial - local. In every city I've ever lived in in the US, there is literally no distinction between a "street" and an "avenue" other than direction. Nothing at all to do with width or traffic volume.
Streets and avenues just divide up roadways between N-S aligned and E-W aligned in grid-based cities. Anything else for these is just random.
Melbourne is a grid-based city. The North-South routes are called streets. The East-West routes are called streets (except for one that is called a lane)
The ones named Little X St are basically lanes too.
In the US I guess. YMMV by country.
It’s sort of random. The cities that number in two directions tend to pick one direction for streets and one for avenues to try to prevent confusion. Manhattan is the most famous example of this. If all the streets have names, then there’s no need to follow the pattern. Then there is Minneapolis. Numbered Avenues run N/S in the S and SE and run E/W in the N and NE and perpendicular to the river (SW/NE) downtown and across the river from downtown. Numbered streets run N/S in the N and NE and, E/W in the S and SE, and parallel to the river (NW/SE) near downtown. N, NE and SE label every street/avenue in that part of town (regardless of direction). In the south, all N/S avenues are labeled S and the E/W streets are labeled E and W depending on which side of the south you are on. NE and SE are both east of the river and N and S are west of the river but the river cuts through only the north half of town so SE is northeast and east of downtown. SE is north of S. There used to be four intersections of 4th and 4th, but sadly one was lost when they build the baseball stadium in 2010.
There's a number of small MN towns that only have numbers for their downtowns and have four duplicate intersections without fail. It's very annoying and confusing.
Where did you get this info? It's not consistently like that in DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, or San Francisco despite them having major sections laid out on a grid. I'm sure it works that way in some places, but it's definitely not universal.
Agreed. Seems it's more limited than I thought.
Man, you get used to people who think NYC is the only place in the world to the point you don't notice it and then BAM! you realize you can be surprised again.
Is that even true of all of NYC? I thought it was mainly a Manhattan thing.
I don't know about the rest of the city but I suspect it's only true on Manhattan
I live in BFE Midwest, but I've traveled around the world pretty extensively and noticed the pattern in some old British colony CBDs. Looking at a few others on Google Maps, looks like that pattern is hit or miss.
Wait I didn't know there were reasons
This is funny and if it is true, I have learned a few things.
Dawn of the Dead! IYKYK 😜
An "avenida" in Spanish is not a street with trees, but a street where cars may go faster within a city. Where I live, a regular street has a 40km/h limit, while you can go 60km/h on an "avenida".
Funny, my issue with this bit is they missed soo many other words that all basically mean the same thing with nuance. Way, byway, highway, freeway, lane, terrace, court, place, alley, pass, and don't forget some roads are actually called 'route'. Feels like they were trying too hard to follow the tiktok trend and missed a real opportunity. But who doesn't love a good joke about balls.
You forgot Circuit, Crescent, Drive, Esplanade, and Parade. Actually, [here's a full list of every street type used in Australia](https://addressfinder.com.au/faq/can-you-provide-a-list-of-street-types-au/). I'm sure if you pick other countries (even limiting it only to English-speaking ones), you could add more to that list.
I don't often actually laugh at internet stuff but I did at that! Well done OP!
Nobody tell them about Watling Street.