trafficked

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of traffic.

   The network trafficked counterfeit medicines across three continents.

   Thousands of artifacts were trafficked out of the region during the war.

   Note

   A k slips in before the ending so the c keeps its hard sound, as in panicked and picnicked. The verb takes two constructions. Intransitive with in (they trafficked in spices) keeps the old sense of buying and selling. Transitive with a direct object (the gang trafficked weapons) is the one that turns passive, as in were trafficked, and that is where the illegal-trade meaning now lives.

   For centuries the port's merchants trafficked in silk and spices.

   Hundreds of stolen paintings were trafficked across the border.

2. 2
   adjective

   Carrying a flow of vehicles or people, or open to the passage of traffic.

   Like a popular store entrance that crowds pass through all day.

   The most heavily trafficked bridges in the city need constant repair.

   Online stores compete to appear on the most trafficked search pages.

   Similartraveled, used, visited, busy

   Note

   An adjective built from the noun, and it rarely stands alone: it wants an adverb in front. David P. Morgan's Steam's Finest Hour (1959) speaks of thinly trafficked railway lines, and later writers describe a very trafficked area or a causeway far more trafficked than remoter stretches. It looks like a yes-or-no word, but in use it grades freely: very, more, heavily, lightly. Treat it as a scale.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of traffick.

   Early traders trafficked in furs and tobacco across the colonies.

   Banned substances were trafficked through several minor ports.

   Note

   Once the ending is on, this form looks exactly like the past of traffic, so nothing in print shows which base spelling a writer had in mind. On its own, traffick survives as a variant verb that leans toward illegal goods. As a noun it is simply an archaic spelling. Use traffic for the base form and let the k appear only before -ed and -ing.

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