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I would like to know what "rounded streets" means in the following sentences:

I had known him almost all my life, Beniek. He lived around the corner from us, in our neighbourhood in Wrocław, composed of rounded streets and three-storey apartment buildings that from the air formed a giant eagle, the symbol of our nation. There were hedges and wide courtyards with a little garden for each flat, and cool, damp cellars and dusty attics. It hadn’t even been twenty years since any of our families had come to live there. Our postboxes still said ‘Briefe’ in German. Everyone – the people who’d lived here before and the people who replaced them – had been forced to leave their home. From one day to the next, the continent’s borders had shifted, redrawn like the chalk lines of the hopscotch we played on the pavement. At the end of the war, the east of Germany became Poland and the east of Poland became the Soviet Union. Granny’s family were forced to leave their land near Lwów. The Soviets took their house and hauled them on the same cattle trains that had brought the Jews to the camps a year or two earlier. They ended up in Wrocław, a city inhabited by the Germans for hundreds of years, in a flat only just deserted by some family we’d never know, their dishes still in the sink, their breadcrumbs on the table. This is where I grew up.

In this novel which is set in the 1980's in Poland under the socialist regime, where homosexuality was socially unacceptable, the protagonist Ludwik (a university graduate) left Poland in 1981 to live in the United States of America. And he remembers what it was like back then in Poland, where he used to hang out with his friends including his first love Beniek in his hometown of Wrocław when he was nine years old.

In this part, I wonder what this "rounded streets" means. Does it mean perhaps curved streets...?

I am an English learner from South Korea. I would very much appreciate your help. :)

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    Rounded streets simply means the streets were curved, not straight. Can you explain what you are finding difficult?
    – verbose
    Dec 17, 2020 at 9:12
  • Dear verbose, thank you very much for the comment. Actually it was my first time seeing "rounded streets" used to mean "curved streets," so I just wanted to ask you whether my reading was right. But it was really curved street! Thank you very much for letting me know. :) Dec 17, 2020 at 10:10
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    @verbose To be fair, I think this is the first time I've ever encountered the phrase "rounded streets" Dec 18, 2020 at 16:36

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As verbose pointed out in a comment, "rounded streets" means "curved streets". Below are a few other examples of the same usage:

  • "The neighborhood's Old Norwood Park pocket also breaks from Chicago's typical grid with rounded streets that curve around spacious estates and vintage single-family homes." (Norwood Park, Neighborhoods.com)
  • "(...), I exited the diner towards my waiting BMW. Shoving the key into the ignition I made the familiar drive up the curved and rounded streets." (from "Hello, So Long" by Twinflaming, on fanfiction.net)
  • "Bilbao-a city with curves. Nothing sexy, nothing feminine, but a mesh of glass and brick. Rounded streets of the old town mimic a curved ravine." (About Basque Country)

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