traffic

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The cars and other vehicles moving along a road.

   The traffic is very slow during rush hour.

2. 2
   noun

   The illegal trade in goods such as drugs.

   Police are trying to stop the drug traffic in the city.

3. 3
   verb

   To buy and sell something illegally.

   The gang was caught trafficking drugs across the border.

Common collocations

• pedestrian traffic Noun + noun

From Middle French trafique, traffique (“traffic”), from Italian traffico (“traffic”) from trafficare (“to carry on trade”). Potentially from Vulgar Latin *trānsfrīcāre (“to rub across”); Klein instead suggests the Italian has ultimate origin in Arabic تَفْرِيق (tafrīq, “distribution, dispersion”), reshaped to match the native prefix tra- (“trans-”). The adjectival sense is possibly influenced by Tagalog trapik and follows a general trend in Philippine English to construct a noun from an adjective.

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images