Other forms: lanes
A lane is a narrow road, or one marked strip of a wider one. A country lane, the fast lane, change lanes.
The country sense is the older, and lane appears in thousands of British street names. The traffic sense is now at least as common, and life in the fast lane is a fixed phrase for a hurried and expensive way of living.
1nounlaneA narrow road, or one marked strip of a wider one.
“They live in a cottage at the end of a narrow country lane.”
lane is a road.
Old English lanu meant a narrow way between hedges, from a Germanic root.
Proto-Germanic
*lanō — lane, passageway
Proto-West Germanic
*lanu
Old English
lanu — a lane, alley, avenue
Middle English
lane
English, today
lane
From Middle English lane, lone, from Old English lanu (“a lane, alley, avenue”), from Proto-West Germanic lanu, from Proto-Germanic lanō (“lane, passageway”). Cognate with Scots lone (“cattle-track, by-road”), West Frisian leane, loane (“a walkway, avenue”), Dutch laan (“alley, avenue”), German Low German Lane, Laan (“lane”), Swedish lån (“covered walkway encircling a house”), Icelandic lön (“a row of houses”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA