cul-de-sac

Noun

cul-de-sac (plural cul-de-sacs or culs-de-sac)

1. A blind alley or dead end street.
   • Before we had gone fifty yards we perceived that all hopes of getting further up the stream in the whale-boat were at an end, for not two hundred yards above where we had stopped were a succession of shallows and mudbanks, with not six inches of water over them. It was a watery cul de sac.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
   • His was the end house of a cul-de-sac, with the side wall of a huge brewery beyond.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
2. A circular area at the end of a dead end street to allow cars to turn around, designed so children can play on the street, with little or no through-traffic.
   • And in suburbs known for new development, preservationists are often battling a general perception that there is nothing historic or worth saving among the cul-de-sacs.2010 January 17, Cara Buckley, “A Suburban Treasure, Left to Die”, in New York Times, page Section MB; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1
3. (figuratively) An impasse.
   • Physics seems, in fact, to have got itself into a cul-de-sac, obsessing over theories so mathematically abstruse that nobody even knows how to test them.2005 February 14, National Review
   • The internet is a remarkable tool to find others and coordinate, but as an end to itself can become a cul de sac of frustrated desires and circular arguments.2022 June 3, Günseli Yalcinkaya, quoting Mat Dryhurst, “Are you content? How the internet rewired our brains”, in Dazed, archived from the original on 16 Dec 2022
4. A sacklike cavity, a tube open at one end only.