frontage

Noun

frontage (countable and uncountable, plural frontages)

1. The front part of a property or building that faces the street.
   • Put your little reception-room here beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up the sides of it.1885, William Dean Howells, chapter III, in The Rise of Silas Lapham
   • Hotel Corones, which has risen phoenix-like on the site of the old Norman Hotel, has a frontage of 210 feet[.]1973, John Larkins, Australian Pubs, page 173
2. The land between a property and the street.
3. The length of a property along a street.
4. Property or territory adjacent to a body of water.
   • And here he brought up the entire subject of geopolitics in the Baltic, a sea which Germany in wartime must control to be able to assure herself of shipments of Swedish iron ore needed for her war factories, a sea on which Soviet Russia has a frontage of only 75 miles […]1939 June 12, Time
   • It is important to keep municipally owned land, especially lake frontage, in the hands of the municipality.2016 May 25, The Chronicle Herald
5. The front part generally.
   • […] to the eyes of his mother and his aunt, who occupied wicker chairs at a little distance, he was almost indistinguishable except for the stiff white shield of his evening frontage.1918, Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., published 1999
   • War looks but to the frontage, the appearance.1924, Herman Melville, chapter 18, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.
6. (informal) A woman's breasts.
   • "Bes dear," said Throttler, patting her breasts. "Do you think I should get one of those boob-jobs?"
     Bes looked at his hands, at her frontage, at his hands. "They say that more than a handful is a waste."2007, Dave Freer, Eric Flint, Pyramid Power
   • I'd go running in, pretend-breathless, nuzzle her neck, reach around to cup her frontage.2008, Lynn Veach Sadler, Not Dreamt of in Your Philosophy, page 134
7. a front: a public and perhaps false face or façade to some hidden, covert reality.
   • Promises and oaths were nothing but a rather awkwardly construed frontage with which to cover up, and win time for, an even more inept intrigue contrived towards the breaking of all promises and all oaths.1963 [2006], Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, page 95