Come on people, are you singlehandedly trying to screw up the English language?
It’s a STREET or an AVENUE - STRAVENUE sounds like a term made up by some street punks.
Defend this attrocity.
Do you have a cite of this particular atrocity? I’m afraid it’s not made it into wide Arizona usage as of yet. :rolleyes:
Well, I was going to say that, but I Googled for it and there’s at least one of them down Tucson way:
Well, this page shows a list of commonly used U.S. Postal abbreviations for different types of streets. No word on whether “stravenue” is an Arizona-only concoction, but I do agree it’s an unwieldy term.
Still, better than “Arcade”, which apparently is a type of street, unless I’m reading this wrong.
In a city where the streets go north and south and the avenues go east and west, I suppose I could understand why a a diagonal road might be called a “stravenue” (but why not just use “boulevard” or some other well-accepted term?).
That’s about the best defense for the word that I can come up with (and even I’m not buying it).
OP here-
we did the same thing and discovered examples only in Arizona.
Hence the postaimed at AZers.
What’s the question? It sounds like you want a debate. The word is what it is. Compounds are a perfectly acceptable way of making new words in english.
FWIW the only strav I know in Tucson, I grew up there, is Cherrybell just south of 22nd joining Cherry avenue with Campbell. Pretty much the only thing there of significance is the main post office. I couldn’t find 42nd strav on mapquest, just a tiny section west of DM air force base of 42nd street.
I don’t see what’s wrong with this. In the UK at least, an “arcade” is a covered street of shops. A famous example is Burlington Arcade, just next door to where I used to work on Piccadilly in London.
Boulevard(s) in Tucson are north-south but Tucson boulevard is the only example I know right now. Cherrybell is a bit of an anomaly in it’s name but it is a short section that joins sections of two parallel avenues.
I wanted more on the origins of this term.
It seems odd to make a compound of two perfectly acceptable and distinct “road” names.
Where I grew up, street and avenue didn’t signify anything special. To combine them seems superfluous. Boulevards on the other hand were “streets” that had had a raised section (with grass) separating the two flows of traffic. No rules about streets going E-W avenues N-S; although I know some cities seem to have such distinctions.
Lots of towns in the UK have an “Avenue Road”. I guess those wacky Arizonans are just going one further and weeding out the unnecessary space 
So what else would you make a compound word out of other than two other functional words. I once tried to make a compound word from a ground squirrel and a tape dispenser and the results were less than satisfactory. IMO it’s a suitable compound word as most native english speakers quickly figure out what it means.
As for the specific meaning of street types it varies a lot city to city and there are no universal standards. Tucson follows the same n-s avenue/e-w street convention as Manhattan but numbered streets start at the central point and increment going south instead of north. Phoenix has numbered n-s streets incrementing east from Central avenue while numbered n-s avenues increment going west.
Not quite sure if I follow you here. Are you saying that from the center point of town, numbered streets begin and follow numerical order southwards? Because technically that’s not true. Broadway is the “0” for n-s roads (indicating it to be the center, 6th avenue being the “0” for e-w roads), and 5th street is north of Broadway.
I grew up in Tucson, I’m still in Tucson, and I’ve never heard of a stravenue, but I don’t have a problem with it.
You caught me EsotericEnigma. I should have remembered that numbered streets start at a different point than address numbers. IIRC, and it seems I may not, they start at some point on the U of A campus.
I’m pretty sure Stone avenue is the e-w point for addresses though. For a while I lived at 69 E 13th Street which is just west of 6th Avenue between it and Stone.
TheLadyLion and I are down that way from time to time to visit my folks in Marana. We should plan a Tucson D’fest and say howdy.
Two words: sticky nuts. Nuff said.
Pfff, everyone knows that is one word.
I guess I’m all alone on this one.
No one else seems to think putting these two words together is weird.
To me this is like combing cottage and house and coming up with “cotouse” and saying a cotouse is something like a big cottage.
It’s assinine.
IMHO.
I don’t know what is going to satisfy you BwanaBob. You posted this in GQ and I think you’ve gotten an answer but if that isn’t acceptable then you may consider asking a mod to move it to great debagtes.
I want to know when (and possibly why) this word was coined.
Then possibly you should have asked that question intstead of asking AZ dopers to defend it against your contention that it is assinine. I was unable to find an etymology but I did find that the US Postal Service includes it in its abbreviation chart and it is part of the Pima County (Where Tucson is locate) code for address standards.