highway
Pluralhighways
Pluralhighways
- 1A main public road, especially a wide, high-speed thoroughfare with several lanes.
Like an artery carrying the steady flow of traffic between cities.
Construction crews widened the highway to ease the daily traffic jams.
Several major highways converge just north of the city center.
Similarfreeway, expressway, motorway
Oppositebyway
- 2Any public road open to vehicular traffic.
Under the statute, every highway must remain open to all vehicles.
Local highways fall under the council's maintenance obligations.
Similarroad, thoroughfare, roadway
Note
Law draws the word wider than everyday speech does. Here a highway is any public road vehicles may use, whatever its surface, width or importance, so a quiet lane counts as fully as the multi-lane main road. Railway usage shares this broad sense. In statutes and official documents, read the word this way rather than as a big fast road.
- 3A course or path that leads toward a particular destiny.
Critics warned that the country was on a highway to economic collapse.
Their reckless choices became a highway straight to ruin.
Similarroad, path, route, course
Note
The figurative road nearly always comes in one frame: on a highway to, followed by where it ends. The end can be good, as in greatness, but the version most readers hear is AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" (1979). Damian Carrington still quotes that phrase in 2024 for a world headed toward climate disaster, so the bleak ending has become almost the default.
- 4In computing, a bus: a common connection shared by two or more circuits or components.
Every card plugged into the backplane exchanges signals with the others over a single shared highway.
The address highway determines where information is sent on the board.
Similarbus
Note
Hardware designers borrowed the road picture for a shared pathway. It is a set of parallel lines that several components use in common, not a private wire between two of them. It is usually split by job: a data highway carries the information, an address highway says where it goes, and a control highway times each transfer. The same hardware is also called a bus.
Less common meanings
- 5A raised road standing higher than the surrounding land, with drainage ditches running along its sides.
The highway stood well above the flooded fields, its side ditches brimming after the rain.
Carts rolled along the raised highway while the lowlands lay underwater.
Note
The compound read literally: high plus way, a road built up above wet ground, with ditches drawing water off its bed. Old English hēahweġ already meant 'main road, highway', and the same 'high' appears in high street and high road, where it means chief rather than raised. The raised-road meaning now belongs to archaic or historical writing, so use it only where that period flavor is intended.
- 6To travel on a highway
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English heiȝwai, from Old English hēahweġ ("main road, highway"), formed from "high" plus "way." It is related to Scots hieway ("highway").