different between length vs frontage

English

Etymology

From Middle English lengthe, from Old English lengþu (“longness; length”), from Proto-West Germanic *langiþu, from Proto-Germanic *langiþ?, equivalent to long +? -th. Cognate with Scots lenth, lainth (“length”), Saterland Frisian Loangte (“length”), West Frisian lingte, langte (“length”), Dutch lengte (“length”), German Low German Längde, Längd, Längte, Längt (“length”), Danish længde (“length”), Swedish längd (“length”), Icelandic lengd (“length”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: l?ng(k)th, l?n(t)th, IPA^(key): /l??(k)?/, /l?n(t)?/
• Rhymes: -??k?, -???, -?nt?, -?n?

Noun

length (countable and uncountable, plural lengths)

1. The distance measured along the longest dimension of an object.
2. Duration.
   • 1941, Robert Frost, The Gift Outright

     Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

3. (horse racing) The length of a horse, used to indicate the distance between horses at the end of a race.
4. (mathematics) Distance between the two ends of a line segment.
5. (cricket) The distance down the pitch that the ball bounces on its way to the batsman.
6. (figuratively) Total extent.

7. Part of something that is long; a physical piece of something.

8. (theater) A unit of script length, comprising 42 lines.
   • 1890, Henry Austin, Address of Henry Austin Before the Second Nationalist Club (page 38)

     […] open your book of the play, which you have previously carefully perused, and at the same time marked with the proper calls, as thus: a length (or 42 lines) before an entrance, with a pen make a figure on the margin, […]

   • 1960, J. L. Hodgkinson, ?Rex Pogson, The Early Manchester Theatre (page 45)

     The boy was engaged to write out parts at a penny a length (42 lines) for Chetwood, who then charged the manager, […]

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

length (third-person singular simple present lengths, present participle lengthing, simple past and past participle lengthed)

1. (obsolete) To lengthen.
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim, XIV. 30:

     Pack night, peep day; good day, of night now borrow: / Short night, to-night, and length thyself to-morrow.

   • 1552, Richard Huloet, "Ladies of Destinie" in Abecedarium Anglico-Latinum

     Was never man such favour could off atall ladies fynde, To cause them lengthe or shorte the day which they to hym assynde.

   • a. 1608, Thomas Sackville, Allegorical Personages described in Hell

     [He] knows full well life doth but length his pain.

English

Etymology

front +? -age

Noun

frontage (countable and uncountable, plural frontages)

1. The front part of a property or building that faces the street.
   • 1885, William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961, Chapter III, p. 41, [1]

     Put your little reception-room here beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up the sides of it.

   • 1981, Wole Soyinka, Aké: The Years of Childhood, New York: Vintage, 1983, Chapter I, p. 5,

     BishopsCourt appeared sometimes to want to rival the Canon's house. It looked a house-boat despite its guard of whitewashed stones and luxuriant flowers, its wooden fretwork frontage almost wholly immersed in bougainvillaea.

2. The land between a property and the street.
3. The length of a property along a street.
4. Property or territory adjacent to a body of water.
   • 1939, Time, 12 June, 1939, [2]

     And here he brought up the entire subject of geopolitics in the Baltic, a sea which Germany in wartime must control to be able to assure herself of shipments of Swedish iron ore needed for her war factories, a sea on which Soviet Russia has a frontage of only 75 miles […]

   • 2016, The Chronicle Herald, 25 May, 2016, [3]

     It is important to keep municipally owned land, especially lake frontage, in the hands of the municipality.

5. The front part generally.
   • 1918, Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co.; Bartleby.com, 1999, [4]

     […] to the eyes of his mother and his aunt, who occupied wicker chairs at a little distance, he was almost indistinguishable except for the stiff white shield of his evening frontage.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 18, [5]

     War looks but to the frontage, the appearance.

Coordinate terms

• facade

Derived terms

• frontage road

Translations