cul-de-sac
Americannoun
-
culs-de-sac,
plural
-
cul-de-sacs
plural
-
a street, lane, etc., closed at one end; blind alley; dead-end street.
-
any situation in which further progress is impossible.
-
the hemming in of a military force on all sides except behind.
-
Anatomy. a saclike cavity, tube, or the like, open only at one end, as the cecum.
noun
-
a road with one end blocked off; dead end
-
an inescapable position
-
any tube-shaped bodily cavity or pouch closed at one end, such as the caecum
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cul-de-sac
1730–40; < French: literally, bottom of the sack
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He then drove to his sister’s neighborhood, where the car tailed him into a cul-de-sac and stopped beside his white Mercedes sport utility vehicle — an encounter recorded by a home security camera.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026
A police van remains at the scene at the cordon of the cul-de-sac.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
Back in Chicago, I lived in a sprawling three-story Colonial perched perfectly in a cul-de-sac.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
The annual block party on his own cul-de-sac never came back after Covid.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
We found Jase’s Lexus two blocks down from Becca’s street, parked in a cul-de-sac.
From "Paper Towns" by John Green
You haven’t seen how, at every step in creating, tooling and staffing a factory, Astra might be stymied into cul-de-sacs that a human helper would repeatedly have to steer it out of.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
“Torreyson is one of the most exclusive cul-de-sacs in the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by historically significant architecture, including a neighboring Richard Neutra residence, with several notable figures calling the area home.”
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026
Your relative might lose his train of thought; another person’s relative might get stuck in verbal cul-de-sacs of nonsense.
From Salon ● Jul. 19, 2024
The mythical Silicon Valley was in reality a bunch of office parks and cul-de-sacs where subdivision-grade homes went for $2 million.
From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2024
We were both staring into the inky distance, the cul-de-sacs and quarter-acre lots.
From "Paper Towns" by John Green
Today, too many American children cannot safely leave their culs-de-sac.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
Better, then, to make shows for television, a medium that is more comfortable with loose ends and narrative culs-de-sac, where he can tell a “continuing story”.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 23, 2018
Martz saw FlexBus as the key to transforming Altamonte, a loose agglomeration of palm tree-lined strip malls and culs-de-sac a few miles north of Orlando, into a thriving and walkable destination.
From The Verge ● Sep. 1, 2016
That Elizabeth Madox Roberts was lost in one of these treacherous literary culs-de-sac became painfully clear to most critics three years ago, when she published her obscure, mystical novel, He Sent Forth a Raven.
From Time Magazine Archive
They drive until it grows dark, without destination in mind, past hidden ponds and graveyards, culs-de-sac and dead ends.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
