# traffic

> English word · Noun · IPA /ˈtɹæfɪk/ · frequency rank #1,507

## Definitions
1. Moving pedestrians or vehicles, or the flux or passage thereof.
2. The commercial transportation or exchange of goods, or the movement of passengers or people.
3. The illegal trade or exchange of goods, often drugs.
4. The exchange or flux of information, messages or data, as in a computer or telephone network.
5. The exchange or flux of information, messages or data, as in a computer or telephone network.
6. The exchange or flux of information, messages or data, as in a computer or telephone network.
7. The commodities of the market.

## Etymology
From Middle French trafique, traffique (“traffic”), from Italian traffico (“traffic”) from trafficare (“to carry on trade”). Potentially from Vulgar Latin *trānsfrīcāre (“to rub across”); Klein instead suggests the Italian has ultimate origin in Arabic تَفْرِيق (tafrīq, “distribution, dispersion”), reshaped to match the native prefix tra- (“trans-”).
The adjectival sense is possibly influenced by Tagalog trapik and follows a general trend in Philippine English to construct a noun from an adjective.

## Easily confused with
- **tragic** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/traffic-vs-tragic)

## Common misspellings (9)
`rtaffic`, `tarffic`, `traffci`, `trafficc`, `trafic`, `trafifc`, `trfafic`, `trraffic`, `ttraffic`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/traffic