Word Origins

*THOROUGHFARE

New York perhaps thought it had created a new word when it opened its first section of cross-state toll road in 1954, the Throughway, which quickly became known by the non-standard, shortened spelling of Thruway. Beyond the temporary distinction of applying Throughway to a single highway, there is nothing in it that did not already exist in the six hundred-year-old word thoroughfare. Thorough is the ancient spelling of through; fare, used for “passage money,” formerly meant “passage, way.” And thoroughfare has long indicated a “through way between places.”

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)