rarely -vart. [a. F. boulevard, older -vart, -ver; app. corrupted from a Teut. word = Ger. bollwerk BULWARK; cf. Sp. baluarte, It. baluardo bulwark.]
A broad street, promenade, or walk, planted with rows of trees. Chiefly applied to streets of this kind in Paris, or to others which it is intended to compare to them.
(The French word originally meant the horizontal portion of a rampart; hence the promenade laid out on a demolished fortification.)
1772. Weekly Mag., 21 May, 233/2. We made the circuit of the city on the boulevards.
1816. J. Scott, Vis. Paris (ed. 5), 65. The Boulevarde, goes round the capital, and was originally its boundary.
1871. M. Collins, Mrq. & Merch., III. xii. 288. I’m fond of its Boulevarts busy.
1887. Morley, Cobden, II. 128. The massacre of unarmed citizens on the boulevards.
Hence (in newspapers) Boulevardian a., Boulevardish, Boulevardy a., Boulevardize v.
1864. Sat. Rev., XVIII. 27/2. The boulevardizing of Paris has … caused great misery to the poor.
1867. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 Dec., 3/4. The bustle, the bright shops, the grass, the trees, and, in some parts, the broadness, of Upper-street gives it somewhat of a Boulevardish look.
1868. Morning Post, 3 Sept., 4/6. A most unreasonable cruelty to the 50,000 boulevardian idlers thirsting for the daily news in all its amplitude.
1880. Daily News, 12 Oct., 5/4. The trees throve, and the aspect of Cromwell-road, like the genius of a modern novelist as described by a friendly critic, became ‘almost boulevardy.’
