artery

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Anatomy Any of the muscular elastic tubes that form a branching system and that carry blood away from the heart to the cells, tissues, and organs of the body.
• noun A major route of transportation into which local routes flow.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To supply with arteries; figuratively, to traverse like arteries.
• noun The trachea or windpipe.
• noun One of a system of cylindrical, membranous, elastic, and muscular vessels or tubes, which convey the blood from the heart to all parts of the body by ramifications which as they proceed diminish in size and increase in number, and terminate in minute capillaries which unite the ends of the arteries with the beginnings of the veins.
• noun A main channel in any ramifying system of communication, as in drainage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun obsolete The trachea or windpipe.
• noun (Anat.) One of the vessels or tubes which carry either venous or arterial blood from the heart. They have tricker and more muscular walls than veins, and are connected with them by capillaries.
• noun Hence: Any continuous or ramified channel of communication.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An efferent blood vessel from the heart, conveying blood away from the heart regardless of oxygenation status; see pulmonary artery.
• noun A major transit corridor.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a major thoroughfare that bears important traffic
• noun a blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the body