traffic

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the amount of activity over a communication system during a given period of time

   heavy traffic overloaded the trunk lines

2. 2
   verb

   trade or deal a commodity

   They trafficked with us for gold

3. 3
   verb

   deal illegally

   traffic drugs

4. 4
   noun

   Moving pedestrians or vehicles, or the flux or passage thereof.

   The traffic is slow during rush hour.

5. 5
   noun

   The commercial transportation or exchange of goods, or the movement of passengers or people.

   I had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians).

6. 6
   noun

   The illegal trade or exchange of goods, often drugs.

   They, in turn, had long dominated the drug traffic in the area of north-east Afghanistan that they controlled during the Taliban years.

7. 7
   noun

   The exchange or flux of information, messages or data, as in a computer or telephone network.

   The parish stank of idolatry, abominable rites were practiced in secret, and in all the bounds there was no one had a more evil name for the black traffic than one Alison Sempill, who bode at the Skerburnfoot.

8. 8
   noun

   The commodities of the market.

   You'll see a draggled damsel / From Billingsgate her fishy traffic bear.

Etymology

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.