frontage

From front +‎ -age.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹʌn.tɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

frontage (countable and uncountable, plural frontages)

1. The front part of a property or building that faces the street.
   • 1885, William Dean Howells, chapter III, in The Rise of Silas Lapham‎:

     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.

   • 1973, John Larkins, Australian Pubs, page 173:

     Hotel Corones, which has risen phoenix-like on the site of the old Norman Hotel, has a frontage of 210 feet[.]

   • 1981, Wole Soyinka, chapter I, in Aké: The Years of Childhood, New York: Vintage, published 1983, page 5:

     BishopsCourt appeared sometimes to want to rival the Canon's house. It looked a house-boat despite its guard of whitewashed stones and luxuriant flowers, its wooden fretwork frontage almost wholly immersed in bougainvillaea.

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.
   • 1939 June 12, Time:

     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 […]

   • 2016 May 25, The Chronicle Herald:

     It is important to keep municipally owned land, especially lake frontage, in the hands of the municipality.

5. The front part generally.
   • 1918, Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons‎, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., published 1999:

     […] 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.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 18, in Billy Budd‎, London: Constable & Co.:

     War looks but to the frontage, the appearance.

6. (informal) A woman's breasts.
   • 2007, Dave Freer, Eric Flint, Pyramid Power:

     "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."

   • 2008, Lynn Veach Sadler, Not Dreamt of in Your Philosophy, page 134:

     I'd go running in, pretend-breathless, nuzzle her neck, reach around to cup her frontage.

• See Thesaurus:breasts

• facade

• frontage road