traffic
/ˈtrafɪk
/- On that night we had reports across the city of burglaries, car crime, public order incidents, domestic violence, road traffic accidents.
- The bill will also restrict the powers of telecommunications companies to disrupt traffic flow by opening roads for cable laying.
- The usual emergencies such as fires or road traffic accidents will not elicit a response from these vehicles, even with the crews and fire engines on station.
Synonyms
- He also stated that the lane was inadequate width, thus preventing two-way vehicular traffic and pedestrian movement.
- Any major disruption to shipping and air traffic can and will leave us without a supply of food.
- There is no central verge, though pedestrian and vehicular traffic are heavy especially during evenings.
- They also agreed to encourage an increase in railway passenger traffic between Sofia and Thessaloniki.
- After the First World War, passenger numbers declined, as road transport improved but freight traffic remained buoyant.
- He gave evidence of the transfer of passenger and mail traffic to the railway route through Liverpool.
Synonyms
- This technology transmits broadband traffic over medium voltage power lines.
- They also showed that on-board systems ignored the Bluetooth traffic generated by an infected mobile phone.
- A network is operated such that message forwarding traffic is shared among routers in a load-sharing set.
- Drug-dealers earn nigh-on incredible sums from the illegal traffic in drugs.
- The traffic in illegal drugs is a global problem, and money-laundering schemes take many forms.
- And those pressures create a lucrative traffic in illegal workers, filling the war chests of criminals.
Synonyms
- Thailand is a major market for drugs trafficked from neighboring countries, most notably Myanmar.
- He catches animals and birds, he traffics in legal and illegal products.
- And finally, no group trafficked in more illicit liquor than the bootleggers.
Synonyms
Derivatives
trafficless
- Then he turns and points to the road heading straight on, the almost trafficless road heading towards some blue distant hills.
- I'm thinking the deep inland high deserts and a nice crumbling trafficless farm road are the way to go
- Based on a startling true story, the show takes us down the trafficless roads and on to the unspoilt paradise beaches of a tiny isolated island in the Bahamas.
Origin
Early 16th century (denoting commercial transportation of merchandise or passengers): from French traffique, Spanish tráfico, or Italian traffico, of unknown origin. Sense 1 dates from the early 19th century.
Borrowed from French traffique, or the Spanish or Italian equivalents, this originally referred to commercial transportation of merchandise or passengers. The sense ‘vehicles moving on a public highway’ dates from the early 19th century. The traffic warden first appeared in London in 1960. Traffic calming is a translation of German Verkehrsberuhigung and arrived on British roads in the late 1980s. See also jam. Nowadays trafficking implies dealing in something illegal, especially drugs, but in the mid 16th century to traffic was a neutral term meaning ‘to buy and sell, trade’. By the end of that century, though, it had started to take on negative connotations.