Interstate

How to spell interstate

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce interstate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does interstate mean?

1. adjectiveExisting between or connecting two or more states.
2. nounA major high-speed motorway forming part of the United States national highway system.

Interstate in a sentence

• adjective

  The company handles interstate shipping across several states.

• noun

  We merged onto the interstate just outside the city.

• adjective

  Federal law governs interstate commerce in the United States.

• noun

  Traffic on the interstate slowed to a crawl during the holiday rush.

Where does interstate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a transparent compound built on the Latin prefix inter-, meaning 'between' or 'among', joined to the word 'state'. The noun 'state' itself descends from the Latin status, meaning 'a standing, condition, or position', from the verb stare, 'to stand'. The adjective 'interstate', describing activity carried on between states, appeared in American English in the early 1800s as the federal union of states grew and trade and law increasingly crossed their borders; the phrase 'interstate commerce' became a fixture of United States legal language. In the mid-twentieth century the noun sense arrived when the national network of high-speed motorways, the Interstate Highway System, was created, and 'an interstate' came to mean one of those roads. The same inter- prefix that means 'between' sits inside familiar words like 'international' and 'intersection', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the full prefix before the root 'state'.

How the word is built

• inter- (between, among)
• state (a self-governing region or member of a federation)