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gateway

UK/ˈɡeɪtˌweɪ/US/ˈɡeɪtˌweɪ/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,951 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: gateways

A gateway is an opening with a gate, or a way into something larger. A stone gateway, the gateway to the north, a payment gateway.

The figurative sense is much the commoner: a gateway city is the way into a region, and a gateway drug is claimed to lead to harder ones, an idea that is much disputed. In computing a gateway is the point where one network hands traffic to another.

Definitions of gateway

  1. 1noungatewayAn opening with a gate, or a way into something larger.B2

    “They walked through the stone gateway into the castle garden.”

gateway is an opening.

Where it comes from

Gate plus way. Gate is Old English geat, an opening, and the compound dates from the sixteenth century.

From gate + way.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

gateway in the wild

  • The Antarctic gateway cities are five cities on the rim of the Southern Ocean through which nearly all cargo and personnel bound for Antarctica pass.

    Antarctic gateway cities

  • As Antarctica is a low-resource environment with no major transportation infrastructure of its own, gateway cities are a necessary part of all Antarctic activities.

    Antarctic gateway cities

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.