Word.ws English Dictionary

main line

main line noun: a standard sequence of opening moves considered to be best play. Also the alternative form of mainline.

Noun

main line (plural main lines)

  1. A standard sequence of opening moves considered to be best play.
    • In that game, Carlsen sidestepped the main line of the Berlin Defense with 4 d4, hoping to unsettle Karjakin. That did not work, and chances were equal for most of the game.2012 July 15, Dylan Loeb Mcclain, “Chess: Fischer and Spassky, Looking Back”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 20 Jun 2022
    • 8.Qd2 is the old main line of the Poisoned Pawn from the days of Fischer and Kasparov.2015 May 6, Malcolm Pein, “Chess prodigy Wei Yi, 15, tops the chart”, in The Daily Telegraph, archived from the original on 08 Nov 2020

Also used as

main line is also the alternative form of mainline.

Forms of main line

pluralmain lines

Questions about main line

What does main line mean?
Main line means a standard sequence of opening moves considered to be best play.
What part of speech is main line?
Main line is a noun.
What is the plural of main line?
The plural of main line is main lines.

Words near main line in the dictionary

  1. main guard
  2. main guards
  3. main house
  4. main houses
  5. Main Lead
  6. main line
  7. main lines
  8. main man
  9. main market
  10. main markets
  11. main meal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: main line (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-main line.wav.

Cite this entry: “main line.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/main_line. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.