The real urban dictionary: how fluent are you in street talk?

“A rare opportunity, ladies and gentlemen. A charming bungalow on this beautiful tree-lined street..

.” The auctioneer gestures north and south, only to realise his gaffe. So too, the crowd, seeing a bank of parked cars, a set of nature strips, but not a tree in cooee.

Barely missing a beat, the agent adds, “Picture the trees, if you will.” I swear this story is true. Chris, my brother-in-law, shared the blooper as the auctioneer responsible.

He’s also the rellie to call me on occasion for synonyms of “opulent”, a euphemism for “poky”. Everyone is literate in real-estatese, from “old-world charm” (decrepit) to “charming” (weird), yet how fluent are you in civic code? Streets, roads, stroads? We need to decipher the spin of today’s city planners. Credit: iStock Street talk, in essence.

That lack of trees, say, would only be a problem if the property’s address went by the name of avenue, being “a broad roadway, usually planted with trees on each side”. Glades and groves are arboreal cousins. A drive, meanwhile, is where free-flowing cars should encounter few intersections.

Just as terraces, citing the Victorian government’s road-naming guidelines, imply “houses on either side raised above road level”. Similar principles prevail in NSW, where crescents ideally form boomerangs, parades imply footpaths, while courts and closes vouch for a dead-end. Just don’t expect such rules to be policed to the letter.

Rather, the intent lies in the pape.