Word.ws English Dictionary

one-way

/wʌn.weɪ/

one-way adjective: allowing movement, vision, etc. in only one direction; unidirectional.

Adjective

one-way (not comparable)

  1. Allowing movement, vision, etc. in only one direction; unidirectional.
    • one-way mirror
    • The town centre is now a system of one-way streets.
  2. Allowing travel in only one direction.
    • I bought a one-way ticket to Leeds.
    Antonyms:
    round-trip, return
  3. Of a function: easy to compute for every input, but hard to invert given the image of a random input.

Verb

one-way (third-person singular simple present one-ways, present participle one-waying, simple past and past participle one-wayed)

  1. (transitive) To use a disc harrow to turn the soil and kill weeds, in preparation for planting seeds.
    • Over a period of 10 years, the average yield under stubble-mulch tillage has been 10 percent greater than under one-waying with continuous wheat, and 14 percent greater than under one-waying with wheat on fallow.1935, Report of the Chief of the Soil Conservation Service, page 58

Noun

one-way (plural one-ways)

  1. (uncommon) A one-way trip or flight.
    • I wanted to fly but they say a system's coming in
      Chances are high that this is a one way2025, Twenty One Pilots, “One Way”, in One Way

one-way meaning in Tamil and Kannada

one-way in Tamil

ஒருவழி, ஒற்றைவழி

one-way in Kannada

ಒಮ್ಮಾರ್ಗದ, ಒಂದೇ ದಿಕ್ಕಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಚಲಿಸುವ, ಒಂದೇ ಕಡೆ, ಒಂದೆಡೆಗೆ, ಒಂದೆಡೆ, ಒಂದಾರಿ

Antonyms of one-way

Forms of one-way

Verb
third-person singular presentone-ways
present participleone-waying
past participleone-wayed
pastone-wayed
Noun
pluralone-ways

Origin of one-way

From one + way. First attested in 1906 in reference to one-way tickets; 1914 in reference to one-way streets; 1940 in reference to one-way mirrors.

Words formed from one-way

Phrases with one-way

Questions about one-way

What does one-way mean?
One-way means allowing movement, vision, etc. in only one direction; unidirectional.
What is one-way in Tamil?
One-way in Tamil is ஒருவழி, ஒற்றைவழி. See One-way meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is one-way?
One-way can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce one-way?
One-way is pronounced /wʌn.weɪ/.

Words near one-way in the dictionary

  1. one-upping
  2. one-ups
  3. one-upsmanship
  4. one-upsmanships
  5. one-upwomanship
  6. one-way
  7. one-way light time
  8. one-way light times
  9. one-way mirror
  10. one-way mirrors
  11. one-way street

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one-way (page history and authors); one-way (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); one-way (Kannada Wiktionary) (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)-Vealhurl-one-way.wav.

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