Traffic Meaning
/ˈtɹæfɪk/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounMoving pedestrians or vehicles, or the flux or passage thereof.
nounThe commercial transportation or exchange of goods, or the movement of passengers or people.
Sentence Examples
At this hour, there is incredible traffic.
The sudden increase of cars is causing a large number of traffic accidents every day.
There's always a lot of traffic at this time of day.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The bumper-to-bumper ____ on the freeway lasted for hours this morning.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The morning ____ was unusually heavy this morning, so it took me a long time to get to my office today.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"VVhoſe miſaduentures, piteous ouerthrovves, / (Through the continuing of their Fathers ſtrife, / And death-markt paſſage of their Parents rage) / Is novv the tvvo hovvres traffique of our Stage."
— c. 1591–1595 (date written), [William Shakespeare], “The Prologue”, in […] Romeo and Juliet. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Iohn Danter, published 1597, →OCLC:
"I had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians)."
— 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:
"To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish"
— 1910, Emma Goldman, “The Traffic in Women”, in Anarchism and Other Essays:
"Its units of study are regions or oceans, long-distance trades [...], the traffic of cults and beliefs between cultures and continents."
— 2007, John Darwin, After Tamerlane, Penguin, page 12:
"They, in turn, had long dominated the drug traffic in the area of north-east Afghanistan that they controlled during the Taliban years."
— 2018 January 9, Alfred W. McCoy, “How the heroin trade explains the US-UK failure in Afghanistan”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The bumper-to-bumper ____ on the freeway lasted for hours this morning.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The morning ____ was unusually heavy this morning, so it took me a long time to get to my office today.