Motorway

How to spell motorway

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce motorway

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does motorway mean?

1. nounA major road built for fast long-distance traffic, with several lanes and restricted access.

Motorway in a sentence

• Heavy fog closed the motorway for several hours this morning.

• We joined the motorway at junction nine and headed north.

Where does motorway come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'motor' and 'way', that arose in the early twentieth century as long-distance roads were built for fast vehicle traffic. The first element, 'motor', comes from the Latin motor, meaning 'a mover', built on the verb movere, 'to move', and it had attached itself to engine-driven vehicles by the late 1800s. The second element, 'way', is a thoroughly native Old English word, weg, meaning a road or path, and it shares an ancient root with the verb 'to wend' and with German 'Weg'. The combined term 'motorway' became the standard British name for a controlled-access road reserved for motor traffic, with the famous M1 opening in 1959. Because both parts are common everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the compound holds no real spelling trap.

How the word is built

• motor (from Latin motor: mover)
• way (Old English weg: road, path)