Not in Johnson or Todd.
1. Land which abuts on a river or piece of water, or on a road. Also, the land between the front of a building and the road, etc.
1622. Callis, Stat. Sewers (1647), 87. Frontage is where the grounds of any man do joyn with the brow or front thereof to the Sea, or to great or royal streams.
1813. Examiner, 17 May, 319/2. They have obliged proprietors of houses situated at a short distance from the road to purchase their frontage.
1831. Drakard’s Stamford News, 4 Feb., Advt. 1. Two Frontages with two cottages upon the same.
1861. M. Pattison, Ess. (1889), I. 46. One corner of the Thames Street frontage [of the Steelyard] was occupied by a wine-house.
1870. Daily News, 16 Feb. The remainder of the establishment consisting chiefly of the river frontage, will then be sold in plots.
1875. Spectator (Melbourne), 15 May, 16/1. It might be bought and sold in the market any day, like a Collins-street frontage.
2. Measurement of front-line, extent of front.
1844. Port Phillip Patriot, 18 July, 3/7. The run has four miles frontage to the Yarra Yarra.
1863. Hinchliff, Trav. S. Amer., 24. Shopkeepers in the best quarters pay enormous rents, but get very little frontage to display their goods.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Frontage, the length or face of a wharf.
1873. Geikie, Gt. Ice Age, v. 66. The … glacier … shedding icebergs along its whole vast extent of frontage.
1887. Times (weekly ed.), 1 July, 20/4. The substantial old Family Mansion … extensive frontage of 35 ft.
3. The front face or part of a building. Also collect.
1861. Times, 16 Aug. There is a breadth of roadway and a grandeur of frontage that would not disgrace the neighbourhood of Piccadilly.
1875. Merivale, Gen. Hist. Rome, lxxix. (1877), 669. The august capitals of Egypt and Syria, with their long columnar frontages, and marked horizontal lines of architecture.
1875. M. Pattison, Casaubon, 400. Much building was going on at Merton, where Savile was just finishing the fine frontage towards the meadows.
1877. Mar. M. Grant, Sun-Maid, ii. The frontage of the château looked southward, commanding the pics and ranges of the mountains, and facing the full glory and radiance of the Spanish sun.
1894. Daily News, 5 Sept., 5/3. A municipal law requires the frontages of Paris houses to be painted or scraped every six or seven years.
4. Mil. ‘The ground troops of line occupy either on parade or in camp’ (Voyle).
1893. Times, 15 June, 12/1. The battalion commander ‘instructs the captains as to the frontage of their companies.’
5. The action of fronting in a certain direction; the fact of facing a certain way; exposure, outlook.
1859. R. F. Burton, Centr. Afr., in Jrnl. Geog. Soc., XXIX. 183. The breeze is … excluded by careless frontage.
1867. D. G. Mitchell, Rural Stud., 286. But it has no wide and open frontage to the sun.
1871. Daily News, 22 Sept. We had changed front left back to meet his flank attack; now we had still to maintain that frontage.
¶ An alleged sense ‘part of a woman’s headdress,’ given in some Dicts., is based on a blundered version of a passage of Addison: see quot. 1711, s.v. FONTANGE.
6. attrib., as frontage-foot, -owner, -rate, -system; frontage-claim, a portion of land of a definite measurement in front, but of indefinite length towards the rear.
1869. R. B. Smyth, Gold Fields of Victoria, 612. Frontage Claim—A claim, the lateral boundaries of which are not fixed until the lead has been traced through it.
1877. Black, Green Past., xli. (1878), 325. A wild desire possessed us to purchase on speculation all the empty lots available; we would cover every frontage foot with gold, and laugh at all the assessments that were ever levied.
1889. Spectator, 14 Dec., 843. The small affair of a frontage rate.
1890. Boldrewood, Miner’s Right, viii. 81. The frontage system, framed as it was with the advice of experienced officials, was considered by intelligent miners to afford a highly needful guarantee for capital invested in mining enterprise.
1896. Star, 15 Dec., 2/6. Charging the frontage owners 9s. in the pound.
