Oxford Essential Dictionary
street
noun (abbr. St)
a road in a city, town or village with buildings along the sides:
I saw Anna walking down the street.
I live in Hertford Street.
91 Oxford St, London
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
street
street S1 W1 /striːt/ BrE AmE noun [countable]
[Language: Old English; Origin: stræt]
1. a public road in a city or town that has houses, shops etc on one or both sides:
We moved to Center Street when I was young.
She lives just a few streets away.
I walked on further down the street.
Someone just moved in across the street.
a car parked on the other side of the street
2. the streets [plural] (also the street) the busy public parts of a city where there is a lot of activity, excitement, and crime, or where people without homes live
on the streets
young people living on the streets
She felt quite safe walking the streets after dark.
Children as young as five are left to roam the streets (=walk around the streets) at night.
street musicians (=ones who play on the street)
She has written about the realities of street life (=living on the streets).
3. the man/woman in the street (also the man/woman on the street) the average person, who represents the general opinion about things:
The man on the street assumes that all politicians are corrupt.
4. (right) up your street British English exactly right for you
5. streets ahead (of somebody/something) British English informal much better than someone or something else:
James is streets ahead of the rest of the class at reading.
⇨ backstreet, ⇨ be (living) on easy street at easy1(13), ⇨ one-way street at one-way(1), ⇨ high street, two-way street, ⇨ walk the streets at walk1(8)
• • •
COLLOCATIONS
■ adjectives
▪ busy (=with a lot of traffic or people) The house faces onto a busy street.
▪ crowded (=with a lot of people) The streets get very crowded at weekends.
▪ quiet (=with very few people) It was late and the streets were quiet.
▪ empty/deserted (=with no people) As he walked home, the street was deserted.
▪ narrow an old city with quaint narrow streets
▪ the main street (=the biggest street in a town or village) They drove slowly along the main street.
▪ the high street British English (=the main street with shops) I bought this coat at a shop on the high street.
▪ a shopping street British English (=with a lot of shops) This is one of Europe’s most elegant shopping streets.
▪ a residential street (=with houses, not shops) a quiet residential street
▪ a one-way street (=in which you can only drive in one direction) He was caught driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
▪ a side/back street (=a small quiet street near the main street) The restaurant is tucked away in a side street.
▪ winding streets (=streets that turn in many directions) We spent hours exploring the town’s winding streets.
▪ cobbled streets (=with a surface made from round stones) The cobbled streets were closed to cars.
■ verbs
▪ cross the street (=walk to the other side) She crossed the street and walked into the bank.
■ street + NOUN
▪ a street corner (=a place where streets meet) Youths were standing around on street corners.
▪ a street light/lamp It was getting dark, and the street lamps were already on.
▪ street crime/violence (=when people are attacked in the street) Young men are most likely to be victims of street crime.
▪ street clothes (=ordinary clothes, not a special uniform or costume) She changed into her street clothes and left the theatre.
• • •
THESAURUS
■ types of road
▪ road a hard surface for cars, buses etc to drive on: They're planning to build a new road. | My address is 42, Station Road.
▪ street a road in a town, with houses or shops on each side: She lives on our street. | We walked along the streets of the old town. | Oxford Street is one of Europe's busiest shopping areas. | He was stopped by the police, driving the wrong way down a one-way street. | Turn left on Main Street (=the street in the middle of a town, where most of the shops are – used in American English). | These days the same shops are on every high street (=the street in the middle of a town, where most of the shops are – used in British English).
▪ avenue a road in a town, often with trees on each side: the busy avenue in front of the cathedral | He lived on Park Avenue.
▪ boulevard a wide road in a city or town – used especially in street names in the US, France etc. In the UK, streets are usually called avenue rather than boulevard: the world-famous Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
▪ lane a narrow road in the country: a winding country lane
▪ cul-de-sac a short street which is closed at one end: The house is situated in a quiet cul-de-sac in North Oxford.
▪ track especially British English, dirt road American English a narrow road in the country, usually without a hard surface: The farm was down a bumpy track.
▪ ring road British English a road that goes around a town: The airport is on the ring road.
▪ bypass British English a road that goes past a town, allowing traffic to avoid the centre: The bypass would take heavy traffic out of the old city centre.
▪ dual carriageway British English, divided highway American English a road with a barrier or strip of land in the middle that has lines of traffic travelling in each direction: I waited until we were on the dual carriageway before I overtook him.
▪ freeway/expressway American English a very wide road in a city or between cities, on which cars can travel very fast without stopping: Take the Hollywood Freeway (101) south, exit at Vine Street and drive east on Franklin Avenue. | Over on the side of the expressway, he saw an enormous sedan, up against a stone wall.
▪ motorway British English, highway American English a very wide road for travelling fast over long distances: The speed limit on the motorway is 70 miles an hour. | the Pacific Coast Highway
▪ interstate American English a road for fast traffic that goes between states: The accident happened on Interstate 84, about 10 miles east of Hartford.
▪ toll road a road that you pay to use: The government is planning to introduce toll roads, in an effort to cut traffic congestion.
▪ turnpike American English a large road for fast traffic that you pay to use: He dropped her off at an entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
street
street
street [street streets] noun, adjective [striːt] [striːt]
noun
1. countable (abbr. St, st) a public road in a city or town that has houses and buildings on one side or both sides
• The bank is just across the street.
• to walk along/down/up the street
• the town's narrow cobbled streets
• 92nd Street
• 10 Downing Street
• He is used to being recognized in the street.
• a street map/plan of York
• street theatre/musicians
• My office is at street level (= on the ground floor).
• It's not safe to walk the streets at night.
• It was time to take the political struggle onto the streets (= by protesting in large groups in the streets of a city).
see also backstreet, high street, side street
2. singular the ideas and opinions of ordinary people, especially people who live in cities, which are considered important
• The feeling I get from the street is that we have a good chance of winning this election.
• The word on the street is that it's not going to happen.
• Opinion on the street was divided.
more at on easy street at easy adj., hit the streets at hit v., the man (and/or woman) in the street at man n.
Word Origin:
Old English strǣt, of West Germanic origin, from late Latin strāta (via) ‘paved (way)’, feminine past participle of sternere ‘lay down’.
Culture:
street names
In Britain, main roads outside towns and cities are known by numbers rather than names. An exception is the A1 from London to north-eastern England, which is often called the Great North Road. Roads that follow the line of former Roman roads also have names, e.g. the Fosse Way. If a main road passes through a town, that part of it usually has a name, often that of the place which the road goes to, e.g. London Road.
The main shopping street in a town is often called High Street, or sometimes Market Street. Many streets take their name from a local feature or building. The most common include Bridge Street, Castle Street, Church Street, Mill Street and Station Road. Some names indicate the trade that was formerly carried on in that area. Examples are Candlemaker’s Row, Cornmarket, Petticoat Lane and Sheep Street. Many streets laid out in the 19th century were named after famous people or events. These include Albert Street, Cromwell Road, Shakespeare Street, Wellington Street, Trafalgar Road and Waterloo Street. When housing estates are built, the names of the new roads in them are usually all on the same theme. Names of birds or animals are popular. Others are based on the old names for the fields that the houses were built on, e.g. Tenacres Road, The Slade and Meadow Walk. The name of a road is written on signs at each end of it, sometimes together with the local postcode.
Some streets have become so closely identified with people of a particular profession that the street name itself is immediately associated with them. In London, Harley Street has been associated with private doctors and Fleet Street with newspapers.
In the US main roads such as interstates and highways are known by numbers. Most towns and cities are laid out on a grid pattern and have long streets with avenues crossing them. Each has a number, e.g. 7th Avenue, 42nd Street. The roads are often straight and have square blocks of buildings between them. This makes it easier to find an address and also helps people to judge distance. In Manhattan, for example, Tiffany's is described as being at East 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, i.e. on the corner of those two streets. The distance between West 90th Street and West 60th Street is 30 blocks.
As well as having numbers, many streets are named after people, places, local features, history and nature. In Manhattan there is Washington Street, Lexington Avenue, Liberty Street, Church Street and Cedar Street. Some streets are named after the town to which they lead. The most important street is often called Main Street. A suburb or subdivision of a city may have streets with similar names. In a subdivision of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, all the names end in ‚wood’, e.g. Balsawood Drive, Limewood Drive and Aspenwood Drive.
Some roads are called boulevards, with Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard and Miami's Biscayne Boulevard among the best known. Avenues usually cross streets, as in New York, but often the word is chosen as part of a name for no particular reason. Avenue and boulevard once indicated roads with trees along each side, but few have trees today. A road in the US is usually found outside cities, though Chicago uses the name for some central streets.
Some street names have particular associations: Grant Avenue in San Francisco is associated with Chinatown, Beale Street in Memphis with the blues, and Bourbon Street in New Orleans with jazz. In New York Wall Street is associated with the financial world, Madison Avenue with advertising and Broadway with theatres.
Thesaurus:
street noun C
• I walked up the street.
road • • avenue • • lane • • alley • |especially AmE highway • |AmE boulevard •
in the street/road/avenue/lane/alley
on a street/road/highway
cross the street/road/highway
Street or road? In a town or city, street is the most usual word, although streets are often called Road, especially in British English; in the countryside the usual word is road
• a street map of London
• a road map of Britain
• 205 Woodstock Road
More About:
roads
Roads and streets
In a town or city, street is the most general word for a road with houses and buildings on one or both sides: ▪ a street map of London. Street is not used for roads between towns, but streets in towns are often called Road: ▪ Oxford Street ◊ ▪ Mile End Road. A road map of a country shows you the major routes between, around and through towns and cities.
Other words used in the names of streets include: Circle, Court, Crescent, Drive, Hill and Way. Avenue suggests a wide street lined with trees. A lane is a narrow street between buildings or, in BrE, a narrow country road.The high street
High street is used in BrE, especially as a name, for the main street of a town, where most shops, banks, etc. are: ▪ the record store in the High Street ◊ ▪ high street shops. In NAmE Main Street is often used as a name for this street.Larger roads
British and American English use different words for the roads that connect towns and cities. Motorways, (for example, the M57) in BrE, freeways, highways or interstates, (for example State Route 347, Interstate 94, the Long Island Expressway) in NAmE, are large divided roads built for long-distance traffic to avoid towns.
A ring road (BrE) / an outer belt (NAmE) is built around a city or town to reduce traffic in the centre. This can also be called a beltway in NAmE, especially when it refers to the road around Washington D.C. A bypass passes around a town or city rather than through the centre.
Example Bank:
• A couple were arguing out in the street.
• Argentinians took to the streets in protest.
• Crowds thronged the streets.
• Dead bodies littered the streets.
• Gangs roamed the streets at night.
• He could see her across the street.
• He grew up on the mean streets of one of the city's toughest areas.
• He pleaded guilty to illegal street trading.
• He suffered extensive injuries in a street attack.
• He turned into a side street.
• He wandered through the streets of Calcutta.
• He works at a small store on Main Street.
• Her shocking autobiography is about to hit the streets.
• His spell in prison gained him a lot of street cred.
• I was living on 10th Street off Hudson.
• It really irritates me when people ride bicycles in pedestrian streets.
• Most local people support the idea of traffic-free streets.
• Most street names were changed under the new regime.
• Mozart is remembered by a street named after him.
• Police were told to clear the streets of drug dealers before the Olympics.
• Sales on the UK high street are in decline.
• She lives just up the street here.
• She parks her car in the street.
• She stepped out into the street.
• She was thrown onto the street.
• Spectators lined the streets.
• Take the second street on the right after the bridge.
• The charity is having a street collection in aid of the local hospital.
• The police have been patrolling the streets in this area since the murder.
• The shops had no street numbers on.
• The streets are teeming with traffic.
• The streets were packed with people shopping.
• There were photographers outside the street door so she used a back entrance.
• There's a chemist's just up the street.
• They walked along the street.
• Thousands of people were out on the streets for the protest.
• Tourists need to be wary of street hustlers near the station.
• We live in Barker Street.
• We turned down a dead-end street by mistake.
• You've taken the wrong street.
• a bar in a side street off Oxford Street
• a bar in a side street off the Champs-Élysées
• a charity set up to house street children
• a club just off William Street
• a painting of a typical Parisian street scene
• a plan to keep teenagers off the streets
• a rundown house in the back streets of London
• drugs with a street value of £5 million
• high-street retailers
• people dealing drugs on the street
• people engaged in informal street selling
• street fighting between police and stone-throwing youths
• streets lined with cafes
• the dense street pattern of the old town
• the street culture of working-class youth
• the town's main shopping street
• Do you have a street plan of the town?
• I met him by chance in the street.
• I spotted her on the other side of the street.
• I walked up the street as far as the post office.
• It's a medieval town, with narrow cobbled streets.
• It's not safe to walk the streets around here.
• The office is at street level.
• The streets are very busy at this time of year.
• There are no street lights in the village.
• There are several banks in the high street.
Idioms: on the street ▪ on the streets ▪ streets ahead ▪ streets are paved with gold ▪ up your street
adjective only before noun
informal and based on the daily life of ordinary people in cities
• street sports such as skateboarding and skating
• street newspapers sold by the homeless
• street culture/dance/law
• Street sport is informal and based on whatever people want to play.
Word Origin:
Old English strǣt, of West Germanic origin, from late Latin strāta (via) ‘paved (way)’, feminine past participle of sternere ‘lay down’.
street [street streets] noun, adjective [striːt] [striːt]
noun
1. countable (abbr. St, st) a public road in a city or town that has houses and buildings on one side or both sides
• The bank is just across the street.
• to walk along/down/up the street
• the town's narrow cobbled streets
• 92nd Street
• 10 Downing Street
• He is used to being recognized in the street.
• a street map/plan of York
• street theatre/musicians
• My office is at street level (= on the ground floor).
• It's not safe to walk the streets at night.
• It was time to take the political struggle onto the streets (= by protesting in large groups in the streets of a city).
see also backstreet, high street, side street
2. singular the ideas and opinions of ordinary people, especially people who live in cities, which are considered important
• The feeling I get from the street is that we have a good chance of winning this election.
• The word on the street is that it's not going to happen.
• Opinion on the street was divided.
more at on easy street at easy adj., hit the streets at hit v., the man (and/or woman) in the street at man n.
Word Origin:
Old English strǣt, of West Germanic origin, from late Latin strāta (via) ‘paved (way)’, feminine past participle of sternere ‘lay down’.
Culture:
street names
In Britain, main roads outside towns and cities are known by numbers rather than names. An exception is the A1 from London to north-eastern England, which is often called the Great North Road. Roads that follow the line of former Roman roads also have names, e.g. the Fosse Way. If a main road passes through a town, that part of it usually has a name, often that of the place which the road goes to, e.g. London Road.
The main shopping street in a town is often called High Street, or sometimes Market Street. Many streets take their name from a local feature or building. The most common include Bridge Street, Castle Street, Church Street, Mill Street and Station Road. Some names indicate the trade that was formerly carried on in that area. Examples are Candlemaker’s Row, Cornmarket, Petticoat Lane and Sheep Street. Many streets laid out in the 19th century were named after famous people or events. These include Albert Street, Cromwell Road, Shakespeare Street, Wellington Street, Trafalgar Road and Waterloo Street. When housing estates are built, the names of the new roads in them are usually all on the same theme. Names of birds or animals are popular. Others are based on the old names for the fields that the houses were built on, e.g. Tenacres Road, The Slade and Meadow Walk. The name of a road is written on signs at each end of it, sometimes together with the local postcode.
Some streets have become so closely identified with people of a particular profession that the street name itself is immediately associated with them. In London, Harley Street has been associated with private doctors and Fleet Street with newspapers.
In the US main roads such as interstates and highways are known by numbers. Most towns and cities are laid out on a grid pattern and have long streets with avenues crossing them. Each has a number, e.g. 7th Avenue, 42nd Street. The roads are often straight and have square blocks of buildings between them. This makes it easier to find an address and also helps people to judge distance. In Manhattan, for example, Tiffany's is described as being at East 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, i.e. on the corner of those two streets. The distance between West 90th Street and West 60th Street is 30 blocks.
As well as having numbers, many streets are named after people, places, local features, history and nature. In Manhattan there is Washington Street, Lexington Avenue, Liberty Street, Church Street and Cedar Street. Some streets are named after the town to which they lead. The most important street is often called Main Street. A suburb or subdivision of a city may have streets with similar names. In a subdivision of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, all the names end in ‚wood’, e.g. Balsawood Drive, Limewood Drive and Aspenwood Drive.
Some roads are called boulevards, with Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard and Miami's Biscayne Boulevard among the best known. Avenues usually cross streets, as in New York, but often the word is chosen as part of a name for no particular reason. Avenue and boulevard once indicated roads with trees along each side, but few have trees today. A road in the US is usually found outside cities, though Chicago uses the name for some central streets.
Some street names have particular associations: Grant Avenue in San Francisco is associated with Chinatown, Beale Street in Memphis with the blues, and Bourbon Street in New Orleans with jazz. In New York Wall Street is associated with the financial world, Madison Avenue with advertising and Broadway with theatres.
Thesaurus:
street noun C
• I walked up the street.
road • • avenue • • lane • • alley • |especially AmE highway • |AmE boulevard •
in the street/road/avenue/lane/alley
on a street/road/highway
cross the street/road/highway
Street or road? In a town or city, street is the most usual word, although streets are often called Road, especially in British English; in the countryside the usual word is road
• a street map of London
• a road map of Britain
• 205 Woodstock Road
More About:
roads
Roads and streets
In a town or city, street is the most general word for a road with houses and buildings on one or both sides: ▪ a street map of London. Street is not used for roads between towns, but streets in towns are often called Road: ▪ Oxford Street ◊ ▪ Mile End Road. A road map of a country shows you the major routes between, around and through towns and cities.
Other words used in the names of streets include: Circle, Court, Crescent, Drive, Hill and Way. Avenue suggests a wide street lined with trees. A lane is a narrow street between buildings or, in BrE, a narrow country road.The high street
High street is used in BrE, especially as a name, for the main street of a town, where most shops, banks, etc. are: ▪ the record store in the High Street ◊ ▪ high street shops. In NAmE Main Street is often used as a name for this street.Larger roads
British and American English use different words for the roads that connect towns and cities. Motorways, (for example, the M57) in BrE, freeways, highways or interstates, (for example State Route 347, Interstate 94, the Long Island Expressway) in NAmE, are large divided roads built for long-distance traffic to avoid towns.
A ring road (BrE) / an outer belt (NAmE) is built around a city or town to reduce traffic in the centre. This can also be called a beltway in NAmE, especially when it refers to the road around Washington D.C. A bypass passes around a town or city rather than through the centre.
Example Bank:
• A couple were arguing out in the street.
• Argentinians took to the streets in protest.
• Crowds thronged the streets.
• Dead bodies littered the streets.
• Gangs roamed the streets at night.
• He could see her across the street.
• He grew up on the mean streets of one of the city's toughest areas.
• He pleaded guilty to illegal street trading.
• He suffered extensive injuries in a street attack.
• He turned into a side street.
• He wandered through the streets of Calcutta.
• He works at a small store on Main Street.
• Her shocking autobiography is about to hit the streets.
• His spell in prison gained him a lot of street cred.
• I was living on 10th Street off Hudson.
• It really irritates me when people ride bicycles in pedestrian streets.
• Most local people support the idea of traffic-free streets.
• Most street names were changed under the new regime.
• Mozart is remembered by a street named after him.
• Police were told to clear the streets of drug dealers before the Olympics.
• Sales on the UK high street are in decline.
• She lives just up the street here.
• She parks her car in the street.
• She stepped out into the street.
• She was thrown onto the street.
• Spectators lined the streets.
• Take the second street on the right after the bridge.
• The charity is having a street collection in aid of the local hospital.
• The police have been patrolling the streets in this area since the murder.
• The shops had no street numbers on.
• The streets are teeming with traffic.
• The streets were packed with people shopping.
• There were photographers outside the street door so she used a back entrance.
• There's a chemist's just up the street.
• They walked along the street.
• Thousands of people were out on the streets for the protest.
• Tourists need to be wary of street hustlers near the station.
• We live in Barker Street.
• We turned down a dead-end street by mistake.
• You've taken the wrong street.
• a bar in a side street off Oxford Street
• a bar in a side street off the Champs-Élysées
• a charity set up to house street children
• a club just off William Street
• a painting of a typical Parisian street scene
• a plan to keep teenagers off the streets
• a rundown house in the back streets of London
• drugs with a street value of £5 million
• high-street retailers
• people dealing drugs on the street
• people engaged in informal street selling
• street fighting between police and stone-throwing youths
• streets lined with cafes
• the dense street pattern of the old town
• the street culture of working-class youth
• the town's main shopping street
• Do you have a street plan of the town?
• I met him by chance in the street.
• I spotted her on the other side of the street.
• I walked up the street as far as the post office.
• It's a medieval town, with narrow cobbled streets.
• It's not safe to walk the streets around here.
• The office is at street level.
• The streets are very busy at this time of year.
• There are no street lights in the village.
• There are several banks in the high street.
Idioms: on the street ▪ on the streets ▪ streets ahead ▪ streets are paved with gold ▪ up your street
adjective only before noun
informal and based on the daily life of ordinary people in cities
• street sports such as skateboarding and skating
• street newspapers sold by the homeless
• street culture/dance/law
• Street sport is informal and based on whatever people want to play.
Word Origin:
Old English strǣt, of West Germanic origin, from late Latin strāta (via) ‘paved (way)’, feminine past participle of sternere ‘lay down’.
(the) Street
The Street [The Street] (infml)
a popular name for the British television soap opera Coronation Street.
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary - 4th Edition
street / striːt / noun [ C ]
A1 a road in a city, town, or village that has buildings that are usually close together along one or both sides:
The streets were strewn with rubbish after the carnival.
a street map
Our daughter lives just across the street from us.
Diane's house is in ( US on ) Cherry Street.
Builders jeer at us even when we're just walking down the street.
Be sure to look both ways when you cross the street.
The town's streets were deserted by dusk.
At five in the morning, there were still crowds of people roaming the streets.
I bought these sunglasses from a street vendor in Florence.
take to the streets When people take to the streets, they express their opposition to something in public and often violently:
Thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest against the military coup.
© Cambridge University Press 2013
Collins Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary
street
[stri͟ːt]
♦
streets
1) N-COUNT: oft in names after n A street is a road in a city, town, or village, usually with houses along it.
He lived at 66 Bingfield Street...
Boppard is a small, quaint town with narrow streets.
2) N-COUNT: the N, usu on/off N You can use street or streets when talking about activities that happen out of doors in a town rather than inside a building.
Changing money on the street is illegal-always use a bank...
Their aim is to raise a million pounds to get the homeless off the streets.
...a New York street gang.
4) PHRASE: usu v-link PHR, oft PHR of n If someone is streets ahead of you, they are much better at something than you are.
He was streets ahead of the other contestants.
5) PHRASE If you talk about the man in the street or the man or woman in the street, you mean ordinary people in general.
The average man or woman in the street doesn't know very much about immune disorders.
6) PHRASE: usu v-link PHR If a job or activity is up your street, it is the kind of job or activity that you are very interested in. [BRIT]
She loved it, this was just up her street.(in AM, use up your alley)
Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's Dictionary
1street /ˈstriːt/ noun, pl streets [count]
1 : a road in a city or town that has houses or other buildings on one or both sides
• They live on a busy/residential street.
• a deserted street
• a dead-end/one-way street
• You should look both ways before crossing the street.
• Trash littered the streets.
• The police car cruised up/down the street.
• People don't feel safe walking the streets (of the city) at night. [=don't feel safe walking outside in the city at night]
• our neighbor down the street [=our neighbor who lives farther down on our street]
• They live across the street (from us). [=they live across from us on the other side of the street]
• Many of our customers walk in off the street without having heard of us before.
• Angry citizens took to the streets [=went outside on the streets] to protest the war.
• He lost his job and eventually was living on the street(s). [=was homeless]
- often used in names
• The store is at 84th Street and 35th Avenue.
• My address is 156 Elm Street.
- sometimes used figuratively
• Word on the street is that the company is going out of business. [=people are saying that the company is going out of business]
- see also easy street, fleet street, high street, main street, wall street
2 informal : a poor part of a city where there is a lot of crime - usually plural
• He is from the streets.
• the raw language of the streets
hit the streets
pound the streets
streets ahead of Brit informal : much better than (other people or things)
• She is streets ahead of the other students.
the man in the street
up someone's street Brit informal : suited to someone's tastes or abilities
• The job is right up his street. [=the job suits him very well]
• Working with animals is right up her street. [=(chiefly US) right up her alley]
2street adj always used before a noun
1 : of or relating to streets
• a street map
• the store's street address
• poor street lighting
• I saw him standing on the street corner [=the area of the sidewalk where two streets meet] waiting for the bus.
• Our apartment is at street level. [=our apartment is on the ground floor of the building]
2 : occurring, performing, working, or living on a street or sidewalk
• street fighting/musicians/vendors
• a street fair/demonstration
• street people [=homeless people]
3 : of, relating to, or characteristic of a poor part of a city where there is a lot of crime
• street drugs/crime/culture/gangs/slang