the.com/lane

a promise painted on asphalt that everyone treats as a polite suggestion

means a narrow road or marked strip of a larger road, path, or track meant to keep traffic—cars, runners, bowling balls—moving in tidy single file

from From Old English 'lane' or 'lone,' meaning a narrow way or passage, and a close cousin of words in Old Frisian and Dutch ('laan') for the same idea. For most of its life it simply meant a small country road squeezed between hedges or houses; the painted-stripe sense on highways and the swimming-and-bowling sense are modern stretches of that ancient narrowness.

origin
Old English term predates roads themselves
swimming
Olympic pools use lane ropes to cancel waves
bowling
Standard lanes are oiled in secret patterns
phrase
Stay in your lane began as racing slang
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