cul-de-sac

Definitions

1. A blind alley or dead end street.
2. A circular area at the end of a dead end street to allow cars to turn around, designed so children can play on the street, with little or no through-traffic.
3. An impasse.
   figuratively
4. A sacklike cavity, a tube open at one end only.

Equivalents

Examples

“Before we had gone fifty yards we perceived that all hopes of getting further up the stream in the whale-boat were at an end⟳, for not two hundred yards above where we had stopped were a succession of shallows and mudbanks, with not six inches of water over them. It was a watery cul de sac.”

“His was the end⟳ house of a cul-de-sac, with the side wall of a huge brewery beyond.”

“And in suburbs known for new development, preservationists are often battling a general perception that there is nothing historic or worth saving among the cul-de-sacs.”

“Physics seems, in fact, to have⟳ got itself into a cul-de-sac, obsessing over theories so mathematically abstruse that nobody even knows how to test⟳ them.”

“The internet is a remarkable tool to find⟳ others and coordinate, but as an end⟳ to itself can become⟳ a cul de sac of frustrated desires and circular arguments.”

CEFR level