Laneway.

Dave Wilton at Wordorigins.org has a Big List entry on a word that was unfamiliar to me; it begins:

Literally, laneway (lane + way) is a redundant term, and one that is unfamiliar to most Americans. It is found in Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. Originally simply meaning a road, the word in Canadian usage has narrowed to mean an urban back alley.

Today, laneway is chiefly found in Canada, but older instances of the term are found chiefly in Ireland. The oldest example I’ve been able to find, however, is in England’s Lancaster Gazette of 11 May 1822 in a notice of a property sale that describes the bounds of the property: […]

We see the distinctly Canadian sense of an urban back alley in the early twentieth century. From the Toronto Daily Star of 5 June 1911:

The light necessary to the tenants of the offices on the east side of the Traders Bank building is supplied from windows looking out over a narrow laneway and across the roof of the Nordheimer building.

And there is this from the 2 November 1923 issue of the same paper that makes the distinction between a laneway and a street clear:

Juryman: “Do you know if this is a laneway or a street?”

Mr Murphy: “It is a laneway, and has not been opened as a street. Application has been made.”

In the latter half of the twentieth century we get the Canadianism of laneway house or laneway dwelling, referring to a small house built on a laneway behind an existing house. The term is especially prevalent in Toronto and Vancouver.

There’s a fair amount of additional material on Canadian developments; as always in cases such as this, I’m struck by my complete ignorance of a term in common use across the border. Are you familiar with it?