Horizon

If it makes you feel any better, I was given to understand by years of B-grade TV that Americans called motorways 'freeways', only to come to Philadelphia to find that no-one knew what I was talking about.

Erm, we call them freeways here. At least if you're referring to a stretch of limited-access divided highway that runs through an urban or suburban area. I wouldn't use the term in a rural area, though.

What do they call them in Philly?

What do they call them in Philly?

Interstates; highways; turnpikes, if applicable; never freeways. Perhaps it's just not a Northeastern thing.

Regional variation. Freeway is a very common term in California.

On the subject of roads, far more than you ever wanted to know about the Great North Road (now, more or less, the A1) can be found at this tribute site. Originally of Roman construction (it's included in the Antonine Itinery), Smollett, Scott, Belloc and Priestley are among the authors who've written about it. Not a bad place to get your kicks if you were a Centurian or medieval pilgrim.

Well, automobiles are a technology that developed when people still traveled in zeppelins and ocean liners. I would suspect that this common technical vocabulary (as, for instance, with computers) is a relatively new thing.

I just moved to PA from the southern US, had never heard the word for what we called down south a "paved road". Here its referred to as a "McCaddem". There are few "dirt roads" here, but plenty down south.
...but I never heard of a Tobacco road, except as the name of a book.

I don't think that autos came about more than a decade or two from the advent of airplanes, but we use the same terminology for them. Perhaps the ubiquity of the auto was the cause. Apparently Quebec differs considerably from France in their automotive terminology, and I know that the same is true of US Spanish and Mexican Spanish. Airplane use was confined to a technical and economic elite, which was not the case for cars.

Good point. That is probably at least as important a factor.

Macadam. Yes, my parents, raised in Pennsylvania, use that for asphalt pavement generally: "Put on some shoes or you'll burn your feet on that hot macadam," etc.

I think the reason "freeway" isn't generally used in the U.S. northeast is that many major northeastern highways are toll roads. (It was the New York State highway folks in the '30s-'50s who developed the art of finessing highway bond issues into eternal sources of public revenue.) I've always presumed anyway that a "freeway" is as opposed to a toll road. Wouldn't that be right?

MAB surmised:

> I've always presumed anyway that a "freeway" is as opposed to
> a toll road. Wouldn't that be right?

We went around and around about this on rec.travel.usa-canada last February. GoogleGroups for 'freeway toll'.

Some wiseguy(s) tried to argue that it simply means 'free of impediments', e.g., cross-traffic, stop-signs, bicycles, pedestrians, etc. Thus, it would be synonymous with 'limited access highway'. Someone even maintained that a freeway in this sense could be a toll-road but I don't believe he gave any examples.

cheers,

Henry

I think the reason "freeway" isn't generally used in the U.S. northeast is that many major northeastern highways are toll roads.

But that would imply a more compelling need to use the word 'freeway' in the NE, in order to distinguish such roads from turnpikes. I think you're right about its etymological origin, but I get the impression that over time it's just become a way of saying 'big road' in certain parts of the country. I wonder if the Mississippi is the approximate dividing line?

BTW, in Britain it (asphalt) is called 'tarmac', a truncated form of tarmacadam.

Interesting. I never knew tarmac and macadam were related. I've certainly heard the former around here often enough.

I think Alan's right. I can't think of another example off the top of my head, but it seems to me fairly common for a set of related terms with specific meanings to become a mass of synonyms and regional variants over time. Some people like to point to this sort of thing as evidence that language degrades over time (or at least is doing so now), but I think it's just because no one cared enough about distinctions between different kinds of roads to keep them around.