Definition of: way

(wā) noun
1. Direction; turn; route; line of motion or progress: Which way is the city?
2. A path, course, or track leading from one place to another or along which one goes; a road, street, highway, lane, path, or the like.
3. Space or room to advance or work: Make way for the king.
4. Length of space passed over; hence, distance in general: a little way off: often, popularly or dialectally, ways
5. Passage from one place to another; hence, onward movement; headway; progress.
6. A customary or habitual manner or style; a manner peculiar to an individual, class, or people: the British way of doing things.
7. A chosen line or plan of action; a procedure; method: In what way will you accomplish this?
8. A point of relation; particular: He erred in two ways.
9. A course of life or experience: the way of sin.
10. Colloq. Vocation; line of business; profession.
11. Colloq. State of health: to be in a bad way.
12. A course wished for or resolved upon; something which one resolves to do: Have it your way.
13. The range of one's notice or observation: An accident threw it in his way.
14. Naut. a The movement of a vessel through the water; forward motion; headway. b plural A tilted framework of timbers upon which a ship slides when launched.
15. The direction of the weave in textile goods.
16. Law A right of way.
17. Mech. A longitudinal guide for material being worked upon, or for a moving table bearing the work.
18. Colloq. Neighborhood, or route taken to go home: He lives out of my way.
—by the way In passing; incidentally.
—by way of
1. With the object or purpose of; to serve as: by way of introduction.
2. Through; via: We went home by way of Main Street.
—out of the way
1. Removed, as an obstruction; unable to hinder or impede.
2. Out of the proper course; hence, remarkable; unusual; also, improper; wrong: Has he done anything out of the way?
3. Out of place; lost; mislaid; remote.
—under way In motion; well along; making progress.
—adverb Colloq. Away; very far; all the great distance: He went way to Denver. ♦ Homophone: weigh. [OE weg] Synonyms (noun): alley, avenue, bridlepath, channel, course, driveway, highroad, highway, lane, pass, passage, path, pathway, road, route, street, thoroughfare, track. Wherever there is room for an object to proceed, there is a way. A road (originally a rideway) is a prepared way for traveling with horses or vehicles, a way suitable to be traversed only by foot–passengers or by animals being called a path, bridlepath, or track; as, The roads in that country are mere bridlepaths. A road may be private: a highway or highroad is public, highway being a specific name for a road legally set apart for the use of the public forever; a highway may be over water as well as over land. A route is a line of travel, and may be over many roads. A street is in some center of habitation, as a city, town, or village; when it passes between rows of dwellings, the country road becomes the village street. An avenue is a long, broad, and imposing or principal street. Track is a word of wide signification; we speak of a goat–track on a mountainside, a railroad track, a racetrack, the track of a comet; on a traveled road the line worn by regular passing of hoofs and wheels is called the track. A passage is between any two objects or lines of enclosure, a pass commonly between mountains. A driveway is within enclosed grounds, as of a private residence. A channel is a waterway. A thoroughfare is a way through. See AIR¹, DIRECTION, ROAD.