road

🛣️

Meaning

1. A way used for travelling between places, originally one wide enough to allow foot passengers and horses to travel, now (US) usually one surfaced with asphalt or concrete and designed to accommodate many vehicles travelling in both directions. In the UK both senses are heard: a country road is the same as a country lane.
2. Roads in general as a means of travel, especially by motor vehicle.
3. A physical way or route.
4. A path chosen, as in life or career.
5. An underground tunnel in a mine.
6. A railway or (UK, rail transport) a single railway track.
7. (obsolete) The act of riding on horseback.
8. (obsolete) A hostile ride against a particular area; a raid.
9. A partly sheltered area of water near a shore in which vessels may ride at anchor; a roadstead.
10. (obsolete) A journey, or stage of a journey.

broad path

street traffic

public way

way of living

motor road

public road

state highway

super highway

trade-route

national highway

busway

high-way

that side

throughfare

correspondence

country road

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ɹəʊd/

From Middle English rode, rade (“ride, journey”), from Old English rād (“riding, hostile incursion”), from Proto-West Germanic *raidu, from Proto-Germanic *raidō (“a ride”), from Proto-Indo-European *reydʰ- (“to ride”). Doublet of raid, acquired from Scots, and West Frisian reed (paved trail/road, driveway). The current primary meaning of "street, way for traveling" originated relatively late—Shakespeare seemed to expect his audiences to find it unfamiliar—and probably arose through reinterpretation of roadway "a way for riding on" as saying "way" twice, in other words as a tautological compound.