Meaning & use
six-lane highway
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A wide road with three traffic lanes going in each direction.
Grammar: Countable: say 'a six-lane highway' or 'six-lane highways'; the number stays the same in the plural.
Patterns
- a six-lane highway
- build a six-lane highway
- drive on a six-lane highway
The new six-lane highway cuts the trip to the airport by twenty minutes.
Traffic moves quickly on the six-lane highway until the bridge, where it narrows to four lanes.
They widened the old road into a six-lane highway last summer.
Word forms
| plural | six-lane highways |
|---|
Common combinations
- a busy six-lane highway
- The bus crawled along a busy six-lane highway.
- a six-lane highway between two cities
- A six-lane highway now runs between the two cities.
- widen a road into a six-lane highway
- Engineers widened the road into a six-lane highway.
- traffic on a six-lane highway
- Traffic on the six-lane highway was heavy all morning.
Synonyms and how they differ
- freeway
- American; a fast road with no traffic lights, which may have any number of lanes.
- motorway
- British; the same kind of fast road, not necessarily six lanes.
- expressway
- A fast road, often with several lanes, common in American and Asian usage.
Word family
- lane noun
- One of the marked strips of road that vehicles travel in.
- two-lane adjective
- Having one lane in each direction.
Commonly confused: six-lane highway or six-lane road?
six-lane highway vs six-lane road
Almost the same, but 'road' is the general word; 'highway' suggests a large, fast route between towns.
Practice
Which sentence uses the phrase correctly?
Choose one answer.
In a compound adjective before a noun, the number and noun stay singular and are joined by hyphens: 'a six-lane highway'. Option 1 wrongly pluralizes 'lane', and option 2 puts the compound after the noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “six-lane highway”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.