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you know what else is a tree with dead ends? The thousands of suburban cul-de-sacs throughout the US. It makes me wonder if there’s an opportunity to rework them into something other than houses.

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FYI, plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac. It means bottom-of-the-bag in French, so the plural form would be bottoms-of-the-bag. Like the plural of sibling-in-law is not sibling-in-laws. Worthless fact of the day!

Worthless fact the second: even though cul-de-sac is French, the French do not use cul-de-sac for their cul-de-sacs.

"Un cul-de-sac" is simply a road that just stops instead of going somewhere. It usually has a specific road sign to signal it. It's definitely used in (Swiss) French.

Does it mean something different in the US? And what would be the French equivalent then?

The traditional US cul-de-sac is rounded at the end, and usually has a house at the end (the road was never intended to continue)

Here’s a fairly representative picture of the geometry: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8zguy...

Yeah, that's what I imagined. I'd call that a cul-de-sac in French too, but there may be regional differences so I'm curious what GP means when he says the French don't use that word to describe this.

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