Talk:cloverleaf

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cloverleaf

The verb sense. Wikipedia had an article on "cloverleafing" but this has been deleted. — Paul G 07:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably because cloverleafing has no more business in an encyclopaedia than executing a right turn.

I'm not sure if this supports the given meaning or not (I don't believe it does), but it's interesting :

• 2001: Robert Gordon, It Came From Memphis

  Where he's from in Vernon, Alabama, there must be plenty of people who sound just like him, but somehow the forces of life cloverleafed around Dan Penn.

This certainly does :

• 1988: Robert B. Parker, Pale Kings and Princes

  I started up the car and put it in gear and headed down across the Main Street bridge, cloverleafed under the bridge onto Mechanic Street, and drifted along.

As does :

• 1979: David Kranes, Hunters in the Snow: A Collection of Short Stories

  When they cloverleafed onto the Merritt Parkway, the tugs were coming regularly, just under five minutes apart. Both the front windows were down.

— Beobach972 17:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• 1951: (no author given), The American Mercury

  In the midst of a chronic nationwide housing shortage, freeways were suddenly routed in all directions, crisscrossing and cloverleafing.

• 1988: Marcel Montecino, The Crosskiller

  To a place just north of downtown where five freeways intersected, twisting back and cloverleafing over each other like an engineer's absently doodled curlicues. Gold parked the Ford on an empty street of industrial warehouses that dead-ended in a wire fence.

I have also expanded the definition a bit, because the cloverleaf does not need to be a literal cloverleaf road formation :

• 2003: David Maraniss, They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967

  Hay told a military historian that Allen precipitated “the debacle” by “allowing his lead company to pursue the VC down the trail” instead of forming a perimeter and cloverleafing at the first sign of the enemy.

— Beobach972 17:33, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the excellent research. Striking — Paul G 15:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)