frontage

Etymology

It is formed from English front + -age.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The OED compares Medieval Latin frontagium (“front part of a building facing the street; payment for such a site”), recorded in British sources from the 13th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Land that abuts on a boundary such as a road or river: before 1642, in R. Callis's Reading of the Statute of Sewers (printed 1647).^[2] The 1989 edition of the OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged date the word to 1622,^[7][5] Etymonline to the 1620s,^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1615–25.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The first sense concerned land along a road or water, and the land between a building and the road.^[2][4] From the mid-18th century the word was used of the front face of the front face of a building, the facade.^[2] From 1796 it also meant the breadth of a building's or plot's front as a measurement.^[2] In Australia frontage was land along a river or creek, of great value to a sheep station, a use Morris found common there but not peculiar to it;^[8] in early Canada it was the range of lots laid out along a river, lake or base line at the start of a township.^[9] In sailors' usage it was the length or face of a wharf.^[10] A military sense, the breadth of a body of troops, appears in 1857,^[2] a short-lived sense "the fact of facing in some direction" in 1860–67,^[2] and a colloquial, chiefly British, sense "a woman's bust" in 1873.^[2] A verb frontage, to face a road, was formed from the noun in the early 20th century and is now rare.^[2][4]

Timeline

• before 1642 – land abutting a road or river; the land between a building and the road.^[2]
• c. 1750 – the front or facade of a building.^[2]
• 1796 – the breadth of the front of a building or plot.^[2]
• 1857 – the breadth of a body of troops.^[2]
• 1860 – the fact of facing in some direction (obsolete by 1867).^[2]
• 1873 – colloquial, a woman's bust.^[2]
• 1907 – verb, to occupy the land in front of a building (obsolete by 1914).^[2]
• 1909 – verb, to face a road or street.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The front of a building, its facade; also the front of a plot of land.^[11][2][1]
2. Land that adjoins a street, river or other body of water, or the land between the front of a building and the street: The hotel has a long frontage on the lake.^{[5][12][2][1]}
3. The length of the front of a building or plot, especially along a street or river: a lot with a frontage of forty feet.^[11][12][2]
4. The direction in which a building faces.^[11]
5. (military) The breadth of a body of troops from left to right.^[2]
6. (colloquial, chiefly British) A woman's bust.^[2]

Verb

1. (rare) To face a road or street; to have the front towards.^[2][4]

Word family

• frontage road

Related words

• front
• frontal
• frontier

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Morris, Edward E. (1898), Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages, London: Macmillan
9. ^ Dollinger, Stefan, ed., A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 3rd ed. (online), Vancouver: University of British Columbia, dchp.arts.ubc.ca
10. ^ Smyth, W. H. (1867), The Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, London: Blackie and Son
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West