Talk:traffic

Romance languages: vehicle traffic vs. drug traffic

In all romance languages the term trafique (Fr), traffico (Ita), Tráfico (Spanish and Portuguese) and traffic in Romanian has a neutral meaning describing in most of the cases the movements of vehicles. The illegal trade of human beings or drugs or arms in all these languages is defined with the word trait (Fr.) or tratta (Ita.) or trata (esp and rum) from the Latin trahere: to drag.

Well, not in Brazilian Portuguese, at least. I swear I've never heard the expressions "trata de drogas" or "trata de escravos", while "tráfico" I hear all the time. The "legal traffic" is "tráfego". Maybe the word "trata" is used in Portugal... is there a way to distinguish these "versions" of the language in the translations block?
Regards,
--Caveden 18:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Etymology

Is it really directly from three languages; Frenc, Spanish and Italian? Aren't these more like cognates? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Foot traffic rather than vehicle traffic

As an example of the rather old-fashioned meaning of traffic referring to foot traffic, perhaps we could quote the prologue to Romeo and Juliet as an example (‘traffic of this stage’)Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:34, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Done. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:40, 15 August 2021 (UTC)