the.com/main line
the artery everything else hangs off, until it goes down and chaos floods in.
means The principal route, channel, or vessel — a railway's primary track, a major road, a key pipe or wire, or a major blood vein — from which lesser branches stem.
from A plain marriage of two old workhorses: "main," from Old English mægen meaning strength or power (the same root behind "might"), and "line," from Latin linea, a thread of flax (linum) stretched taut. By the 19th century railways had welded them together for the great trunk routes that carried the bulk of traffic, with smaller "branch lines" splitting off like twigs. The medical sense — a major vein — borrows the same logic, and gave us the verb "to mainline": to inject straight into the big vessel, bypassing the branches.
- vein slang
- To mainline means injecting straight into a vein.
- railroads
- Branch lines feed traffic onto the busy main line.
- philly suburbs
- The Main Line is an old-money Pennsylvania region.
- plumbing
- The main line failing backs up the whole house.
- telephony
- Your primary phone number is called the main line.
great western main line — uk railway from london paddington to bristol, opened 1841, designed by isambard kingdom brunel
northeast main line — uk railway from london king's cross to edinburgh, 393 miles, carries east coast express trains