BLIND ALLEY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Blind alley

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/blaɪnd ˈæli/ Listen

Blind alley

noun

A street with only one way in or out. Synonyms: cul de sac, dead-end street, impasse.

(figurative) a course of action that is unproductive and offers no hope of improvement. "So far every road that we've been down has turned out to be a blind alley"

See more definitions of Blind alley...

See images of 'Blind alley'

Etymology of 'Blind alley'

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Blind alley" Quotes from Famous Books

... blind alley; but in the end the duke yielded. His heart was set on carrying through this scheme for regaining his duchess. His mind was so rarely guilty of ingenuity that he could not bear to discourage it. They set themselves, therefore, to making ...

— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... Sainte-Croix was in the rue des Bernardins, and the place near at hand where he was to wait for Belleguise was the room he leased from the widow Brunet, in the blind alley out of the Place Maubert. It was in this room and at the apothecary Glazer's that Sainte-Croix made his experiments; but in accordance with poetical justice, the manipulation of the poisons proved fatal to the workers themselves. The apothecary fell ill and died; Martin was attacked by ...

— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... shop by a party of zouaves who had obtained possession of a small cask of brandy; one was already lying senseless in the gutter, while the other two tried to get away, but were too stupid and dazed to move. Loubet and Chouteau had nudged each other with the elbow and disappeared down a blind alley in pursuit of a fat woman with a loaf of bread, so that all who remained with the lieutenant were Pache and Lapoulle, with some ten ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... notoriously a profane and godless creature; a blind alley of Nature, so to speak, a mistake of which she is ashamed, and which she does not permit to reproduce itself. The thirty mules under Hal's charge had been brought up in an environment calculated to foster the worst tendencies of their natures. He soon made the discovery that the "colic" of his predecessor ...

— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... stranger, I was sitting in the carriage, which stood waiting for the conclusion of the ceremony, in the road outside. I had attended early Mass, and arranged to drive home with my people. A number of boys were playing marbles outside the church-yard wall, in a blind alley. The vestry door opened and Father O'Dwyer came out, clad in his soutane and carrying the well-known whip. He crouched and crept along the wall, out through the gate and to the entrance of the alley. The boys were so intent upon their game that they never noticed his approach until he was close ...

— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

More quotes...