Word.ws English Dictionary

down the road

down the road prepositional phrase: further along, in terms of time or progress.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Further along, in terms of time or progress.
    • They decided to save money by using the cheapest components available, but down the road they ran into problems with reliability.
    • Sometimes I go to the bars and see these kids and think about the meaninglessness and the emptiness that they'll be feeling five or six years down the road when they're tired of partying.1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, Nancy Toder, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author—All of the above and more”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 20, page 8
  2. (slang) Dismissed; fired from one's employment.
    • Those dudes framed a full side wall a foot too high and it was clearly marked on the layout. They got sent down the road — and deserved it.1977, Mother Jones Magazine, volume 2, number 4, page 65
    • […] not only did he observe Doran and Angle drinking beer during the lunch, but also he said right then to both, "Look don't do it in front of me. I just got up here. It's company policy, you know. Any other time you're going to be sent down the road."1989, United States. National Labor Relations Board, Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, page 517
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see down, road.
    • There's a shop down the road that sells a few basic necessities.

Examples of down the road in a sentence

  • Ten years down the road: car giant foresees the non-polluting, accident-proof saloon [title]2006 March 31, David Gow, “Ten years down the road: car giant foresees the non-polluting, accident-proof saloon”, in The Guardian:
  • Although the precision medicine initiative will probably yield its greatest benefits years down the road, there should be some notable near-term successes.2015 February 26, Francis S. Collins, Harold Varmus, “A New Initiative on Precision Medicine”, in The New England Journal of Medicine...

Synonyms of down the road

Words formed from down the road

Questions about down the road

What does down the road mean?
Down the road means further along, in terms of time or progress.
How do you use down the road in a sentence?
Ten years down the road: car giant foresees the non-polluting, accident-proof saloon [title]
What part of speech is down the road?
Down the road is a prepositional phrase.

Words near down the road in the dictionary

  1. down the khazi
  2. down the line
  3. down the middle
  4. down the pan
  5. down the plughole
  6. down the road
  7. down the road, not across the street
  8. down the shitter
  9. down the toilet
  10. down the track
  11. down the tube

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: down the road (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-down the road.ogg.

Cite this entry: “down the road.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/down_the_road. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.