You can picture an avenue as a wide, straight way that leads somewhere: the tree-lined drive running up to a big house. Two rows of trees hold the sides and pull your eye forward, and at the far end sits the thing you are heading for. Whether the word ends up naming a city street or a way of solving a problem, that picture holds — a broad, open route pointing at something.
From the word’s history
English took avenue from French avenue 'way of access', from Old French avenir 'to come to, arrive', from Latin advenire (ad 'to' + venire 'to come'). Its first English use, around 1600, was military: a way of approach. By the 1650s it named the tree-lined approach to a country house, and only by 1846 the wide main street. So 'a way of getting to something' has sat inside the word from the start, which is why an avenue can still be a route to a goal and not just a road.
avenue 來自法文 avenue「進入的通道」，再往上是古法文 avenir「來到、抵達」，源頭是拉丁文 advenire（ad「向」＋ venire「來」）。它進入英文時（約 1600 年）是軍事用語，指「接近的路線」；1650 年代才用來指通往鄉間大宅、兩旁種樹的那條路；一直到 1846 年前後才變成城市裡的寬闊大街。所以「通往某個目標的路」這層意思，從一開始就在字裡面——這也是為什麼 avenue 到今天還能指一條解決問題的途徑，而不只是一條馬路。
Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com), entry 'avenue': https://www.etymonline.com/word/avenue
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原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
avenuenoun/ˈæv.əˌnjuː/
- 1
A broad street, especially one bordered by trees or, in cities laid out in a grid pattern, one that is on a particular side of the city or that runs in a particular direction.
- Finding an address east to west is fairly simple . The numbering begins at Central Avenue and moves logically and predictably either west through the avenues or east through the streets, so you know that 2400 East Camelback is at Twenty-Fourth Street or 4300 West Indian School is at Forty-Third Avenue .
- Boulevards typically (but not exclusively) go east to west; avenues usually run north to south.
- 2
A way or opening for entrance into a place; a passage by which a place may be reached; a way of approach or of exit.
- [S]ome have used to get on the top of the higheſt Steeple, vvhere one may vievv with advantage, all the Countrey circumjacent, and the ſite of the City, vvith the advenues and approaches about it; and ſo take a Landskip of it.
- 3
The principal walk or approach to a house which is withdrawn from the road, especially, such approach bordered on each side by trees; any broad passageway thus bordered.
- They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past farm steadings, into the little village, through the silent churchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay, and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall.
- 4
A method or means by which something may be accomplished.
- There are several avenues by which we can approach this problem.
- As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。