Definitions

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

  • noun A narrow country road.
  • noun A narrow way or passage between walls, hedges, or fences.
  • noun A narrow passage, course, or track, especially.
  • noun A prescribed course for ships or aircraft.
  • noun A strip delineated on a street or highway to accommodate a single line of vehicles.
  • noun Sports One of a set of parallel courses marking the bounds for contestants in a race, especially in swimming or track.
  • noun Sports A wood-surfaced passageway or alley along which a bowling ball is rolled.
  • noun Sports An unmarked lengthwise area of a playing field or ice rink viewed as the main playing area for a particular position, such as a wing in soccer.
  • noun Basketball The rectangular area marked on a court from the end line to the foul line.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A narrow way or passage; a path or passageway between inclosing lines, as of buildings, hedges, fences, trees, or persons; an extended alley.
  • noun A narrow and well-defined track; a fixed or defined line of passage, as a navigable opening between fields of ice, a fixed course at sea, etc.
  • noun The throat: more usually called the red lane.
  • A dialectal (Scotch) form of lone, for alone.
  • ourselves, yourselves, themselves alone. These usages arose by corruption from the older expressions me lane, him lane.
  • noun In sprint-races, the space between cords, strung about 18 inches apart, which mark the straight courses of the competitors. The cords are hold by iron stakes, about two feet in height, driven into the ground.
  • noun A Middle English form of loan.

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

  • adjective Scot. Alone.
  • adjective by himself; himself alone.
  • noun A passageway between fences or hedges which is not traveled as a highroad; an alley between buildings; a narrow way among trees, rocks, and other natural obstructions; hence, in a general sense, a narrow passageway.

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

  • noun A narrow passageway between fences, walls, hedges or trees
  • noun A lengthwise division of roadway intended for a single line of vehicles
  • noun A similar division of a racetrack to keep runners apart
  • noun A course designated for ships or aircraft

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

  • noun a well-defined track or path; for e.g. swimmers or lines of traffic
  • noun a narrow way or road

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English lane, lone, from Old English lane, lanu ("a lane, alley, avenue"), from Proto-Germanic *lanō (“lane, passageway”), from Proto-Indo-European *ela-, *el(ʷ)-, *lā- (“to drive, move, go”). Cognate with Scots lone ("cattle-track, by-road"), Eastern Frisian lone ("lane"), West Frisian leane, loane ("a walkway, avenue"), Dutch laan ("alley, avenue"), Middle Low German lane ("a narrow passage, cattle-track"), Swedish lån ("covered walkway encircling a house"), Icelandic lön ("a row of houses").

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