Word.ws English Dictionary

throughfare

throughfare is the obsolete form of thoroughfare.

Meaning of thoroughfare

Noun

thoroughfare (countable and uncountable, plural thoroughfares)

  1. (now rare except in certain set phrases) A passage; a way through.
    • “I ask you,” cried Lloyd George in 1909. “Are we to have all the ways of reform, financial and social, blocked simply by a notice board: ‘No thoroughfare. By order of Nathanial Rothschild’?”1961, Frederic Morton, The Rothschilds, page 173
  2. A road open at both ends or connecting one area with another; a highway or main street.
    • Mr. Roscoe, on the contrary, has claimed none of the accorded privileges of talent. He has shut himself up in no garden of thought, no elysium of fancy; but has gone forth into the highways and thoroughfares of life; […].1819, Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, Roscoe
  3. (uncountable) The act of going through; passage; travel, transit.
    • The sign leading to the other carriage reads: No thoroughfare.
  4. An unobstructed waterway allowing passage for ships.

Forms of throughfare

pluralthroughfares

Questions about throughfare

What is throughfare the obsolete form of?
Throughfare is the obsolete form of thoroughfare.

Words near throughfare in the dictionary

  1. throughdraught
  2. throughdraughts
  3. throughe
  4. throughfall
  5. throughfalls
  6. throughfare
  7. throughfares
  8. throughflow
  9. throughflows
  10. throughgang
  11. throughgangs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throughfare (page history and authors); thoroughfare (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.

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