Speedway

How to spell speedway

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce speedway

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does speedway mean?

1. nounThe sport of racing motorcycles on an oval dirt track, or the track itself.
2. nounA road or motorway designed for fast-moving traffic.

Speedway in a sentence

• The speedway riders skidded sideways around the loose dirt corners.

• The new speedway cut twenty minutes off the commute into the city.

• He followed speedway all season and never missed a meeting.

• Traffic crawled along the speedway during the morning rush.

Where does speedway come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Speedway is a transparent compound of two very old native English elements. The first, speed, descends from the Old English noun 'sped', which originally meant success, prosperity, or good fortune; you can still hear that older sense in the blessing 'godspeed', which wished a traveller good luck rather than haste. Over the centuries 'sped' narrowed from general success to the specific idea of quickness and rate of motion. The second element, way, comes from Old English 'weg', meaning a road, path, or course, a word shared across the Germanic languages. The compound itself is modern, coined around the early twentieth century, first for racing tracks and then for fast roads, and because both halves are familiar everyday words the spelling holds no real surprises.

How the word is built

• speed (rapid motion)
• way (road, path)