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We suspected the difference might just be semantics, so we went straight to the dictionary. Width and location seem to be the determining factors. Mr. Webster defines a road as an "open way for vehicles, persons, or animals" that generally lies outside an urban district, while a lane is "a narrow passageway between fences and hedges." The distinction seems clear to us. The divergence between boulevard and street, however, is tougher to pinpoint -- the former is defined as "a broad, often landscaped thoroughfare," while the latter is "a thoroughfare especially in a city, town, or village that is wider than an alley or lane" and
usually has sidewalks. Since we've seen plenty of landscaped streets and boulevards with sidewalks, we decided to call for reference backup -- without much success. The Straight Dope claims the list of suffixes for naming streets has become so unwieldy that the U.S. Postal Service only requires the combination of name and suffix be unique. Perhaps urban planners would be better served by turning to professional wordsmiths for help: Poet Patrick Kavanagh called a road "a mile of kingdom," while Emerson lamented that "the street is full of humiliations to the proud." On second thought, we'll stick with the
dictionary.
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