TRAFFIC • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Traffic

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/trˈæfɪk/ Listen

noun

Traffic n.

Commerce, either by barter or by buying and selling; interchange of goods and commodities; trade. "A merchant of great traffic through the world." "The traffic in honors, places, and pardons." Note: This word, like trade, comprehends every species of dealing in the exchange or passing of goods or merchandise from hand to hand for an equivalent, unless the business of relating may be excepted. It signifies appropriately foreign trade, but is not limited to that.

Commodities of the market. (R.) "You 'll see a draggled damsel From Billingsgate her fishy traffic bear."

The business done upon a railway, steamboat line, etc., with reference to the number of passengers or the amount of freight carried.

Traffic return, a periodical statement of the receipts for goods and passengers, as on a railway line.

Traffic taker, a computer of the returns of traffic on a railway, steamboat line, etc.

verb

Traffic v. t. (past & past part. trafficked; pres. part. trafficking) To exchange in traffic; to effect by a bargain or for a consideration.

Traffic v. i. (past & past part. trafficked; pres. part. trafficking)

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.

To trade meanly or mercenarily; to bargain.

See images of 'Traffic'

Etymology of 'Traffic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Traffic" Quotes from Famous Books

... Fourteen hours were required to accomplish the passage, and we were not to arrive till seven o'clock next morning. I was so fortunate as to obtain a state-room, but many passengers were obliged to sleep upon sofas or the cabin floor. These boats monopolized the civil traffic between the North and the army, although they were reputed to be owned and managed by Secessionists. None were allowed to embark unless provided with Federal passes; but there were, nevertheless, three or four hundred people on board. About one fourth ...

— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... city, while it yet slumbered, went the two poor adventurers, wandering they knew not whither, often pressing each other's hands, or exchanging a smile, as they pursued their way through the city streets, through the haunts of traffic and great commerce, where business was already rife. The old man looked about him with a bewildered gaze, for these were places that he hoped to shun, nor did he seem at ease until at last they felt that they were clear of London, and sat down to rest, and eat their ...

— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... back threaded through the traffic remorse fell upon her. "Here's an opportunity for doing quiet, uncomplaining service to the Cause," she reproached herself, "and I'm turning it into a fair picnic for my tongue." Everyone was rubbish, and she herself was no exception. Her ...

— The Judge • Rebecca West

... Vergnes that my earliest recovery of the sense of being in any degree "educated with" W. J. attaches itself; an establishment which occupied during the early 'fifties a site in the very middle of Broadway, of the lower, the real Broadway, where it could throb with the very pulse of the traffic in which we all innocently rejoiced—believing it, I surmise, the liveliest conceivable: a fact that is by itself, in the light of the present, an odd rococo note. The lower Broadway—I allude to the whole Fourth ...

— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... the man beside her; her whole being vibrated with the menace of a dirge, and in the roar of traffic around her she divined the imprisoned thunder of the organ pealing for ...

— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

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