An American term for a ring road or circumferential freeway that loops around a city, allowing through traffic to bypass the urban core. The most famous is the Capital Beltway (I-495) encircling Washington D.C., which gave rise to the political idiom 'inside the Beltway' — meaning the insular, self-referential world of D.C. politics and government. As political slang, 'Beltway' is shorthand for the disconnected elite of Washington: 'Beltway thinking,' 'Beltway media,' 'Beltway insiders.'
Critics dismissed the policy as Beltway thinking with no understanding of what people outside D.C. actually care about.
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(US) A freeway that encircles a city.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
See all Regional & Other slang on Slangora.