Traffic Definition

traffic

English

Alternative forms

• traffick

Etymology

From French trafic, Spanish tráfico, Italian traffico

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æfɪk

Noun

traffic (uncountable)

1. Pedestrians or vehicles on roads, or the flux or passage thereof.

   Traffic is slow at rush hour.

2. Commercial transportation or exchange of goods, or the movement of passengers or people.
   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe:

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

   • 2007, John Darwin, After Tamerlane, Penguin 2008, p. 12:

     It's units of study are regions or oceans, long-distance trades [...], the traffic of cults and beliefs between cultures and continents.

3. Illegal trade or exchange of goods, often drugs.
4. Exchange or flux of information, messages or data, as in a computer or telephone network.

Derived terms

Verb

traffic (third-person singular simple present traffics, present participle trafficking, simple past and past participle trafficked)

1. (intransitive) To pass goods and commodities from one person to another for an equivalent in goods or money; to buy or sell goods; to barter; to trade.
2. (intransitive) To trade meanly or mercenarily; to bargain.
3. (transitive) To exchange in traffic; to effect by a bargain or for a consideration.

Translations

References

• traffic in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Related 'Traffic' Searches:

See Also:

• Traffic
• Traffic Violation