Traffic

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æfɪk

Alternative forms

• traffick

Origin

From Middle French trafique ("traffic"), from Italian traffico ("traffic") from Italian trafficare ("to carry on trade"). Potentially from Vulgar Latin *transfricare ("to rub across").

Full definition of traffic

Noun

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, :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.
5. Commodities of the market.
• John GayYou'll see a draggled damsel
  From Billingsgate her fishy traffic bear.

Derived terms

Verb

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.