Driveway

How to spell driveway

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce driveway

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does driveway mean?

1. nounA short private road leading from a public street to a house, garage, or parking area.

Driveway in a sentence

• He parked the car at the top of the driveway before unloading the shopping.

• Snow had drifted across the driveway overnight and needed clearing.

Where does driveway come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, formed by joining 'drive' and 'way', both of which are old native Germanic words inherited from Old English. 'Drive' descends from the Old English 'drifan', meaning 'to push, force, or urge forward', which originally referred to moving animals or vehicles along; 'way' comes from the Old English 'weg', meaning 'a path or road', a relative of the verb 'to wend'. The compound itself is comparatively modern, emerging in American usage during the late 1800s to name the short private road that lets a vehicle be driven from the public street up to a house or garage. Because both parts are familiar everyday words spelled exactly as you would expect, the word holds no real spelling surprises beyond remembering to write it as one solid word.

How the word is built

• drive (from the verb 'to drive')
• way (path, route)