Carriageway is a compound of carriage and way. Carriage is from Anglo-Norman cariage, from carier ('to carry'), from Latin carrus ('cart'); way is native Old English weg. The historical trail runs through carrus in Latin and weg in Old English. Morphologically, carriageway is transparent: it is a compound of carriage and way. Used as a noun, carriageway now means "the part of a road used by vehicular traffic", so the present definition can be read against the older forms and meanings. The same lexical family is also visible in related forms such as carriage and carry. The result is a borrowed or transmitted form whose modern spelling carries a compact record of its route into English.