lane

noun

• 1a narrow road, especially in a rural area:she drove along the winding lane
• [in place names] an urban street:Park Lane

• 2a division of a road marked off with painted lines and intended to separate single lines of traffic according to speed or direction:the car moved into the outside lane a bus lane
• each of a number of parallel strips of track or water for runners, rowers, or swimmers in a race: she went into the final in lane three
• a route prescribed for or regularly followed by ships or aircraft:the shipping lanes of the South Atlantic
• (in tenpin bowling) a long, narrow strip of floor down which the ball is bowled: a maximum of six people can play on a lane at any one time
• Biochemistry each of a number of notional parallel strips in the gel of an electrophoresis plate, occupied by a single sample: DNA from various sources is placed in separate lanes on an electrophoretic gel
• Astronomy a dark streak or band which shows up against a bright background, especially in a spiral galaxy: the innermost dust lane is dense enough to absorb some infrared