The american word for pavement

Hello everyone:

Pavement in British English refers to the surfaced walk for pedestrians beside a street or road (in British English); the American word for this is sidewalk. In American English pavement refers to the surface of a road or street.

What British word refers to the surface of a road or street?

THANKS

Greetings

Or simply, the «road».

«A car left the road and hit a pedestrian on the pavement».

I can’t remember hearing roadway before, but perhaps that’s just me. Road is probably as good as anything. You’d tell your child: Walk on the pavement and not on the road. Horseroad is colloquial and would seem quaint these days.

Thanks

Do you have no specific word in BE for the hard surface that covers the road?

In AE, pavement refers to the asphalt or other covering that forms the surface of the road.
We do not use pavement to refer to a gravel road, for instance, or a road whose surface is packed dirt.

If I needed to distinguish a paved (or metalled or made) road from an unpaved one (as I did recently, when the last unpaved road in my neighbourhood was made, to my annoyance, ending a little bit of old-fashioned charm), I’d say the stuff they make the road with is tarmac or at a pinch metalling. Of course normally tarmac refers to that of an airport runway, but it’s essentially the same stuff on a suburban street. When they dig up the street or road to do incomprehensible things with the water or gas, we’d normally just say they dig up the road (or street). Again, I wouldn’t normally refer to the blackish lumps of stuff they dig up, but I suppose I’d choose to call it tarmac, or of course asphalt, which is the raw substance it’s largely made of.

It’s not paving or pavement, because that’s always discrete blocks or tiles of cement or stone. However, I would call an ordinary road a paved road. This might be a slight misuse on my part, now that I think of it.

I would call it the ‘carriageway’ in UK English. Bear in mind that paved roads for vehicles only became widespread in the post WWI period.

Roadway in BrE refers to the part of the road intended for vehicles, in contrast to the pavement (sidewalk) or verge (nature strip). (As suggested by OP)
The word «thoroughfare» is non-specific, it could be a bridlepath or a motorway. The older distinction between ‘highways and Byways’ doesn’t cover this modern distinction either.

There seem to be two questions running simultaneously here:

1. What do we call a road in BE?
2. What do we call the surface of a road in BE?

I shall only address the second question.

We sometimes call that hard surface hard standing, though that may be a generic term for anything really solid underfoot.

The more usual word is tarmac. The Scottish engineer Macadam (1756 — 1836) was important in the history of the development of roads because he devised a system of placing small stones upon larger ones, which, together with the idea of camber, produced roads sufficiently strong to stand up to the passage of horse-drawn vehicles.

With the advent of motorised traffic, macadamised roads were not sufficiently strong and it was found necessary to add tar to bond the mixture, hence tarmac, which is short for tarmacadam.

Two other words are sometimes used:

Aggregate — this is usuallly a mixture of stones bound with concrete, sometimes used to make road surfaces.

Metalling — this is the word used for a road made of stones. The metal or metalling is the whole composition of the road. We talk of a metalled road rather than one which hasn’t been reinforced by stones. Most public metalled roads have metalling which is bound by tar, so tarmac is a form of metalling.

I call the surface of a road the road surface

To distinguish between the two parts I’d use pavement and road(way).

Re #10: I can’t remember the last time I heard (if in fact I’ve ever heard) anyone use carriageway other than in the term dual carriageway, i.e. a stretch of road, usually of four lanes (two each direction), with a divider in the middle.

Re #12: I reserve the term hard standing for any piece of made/metalled/tarmacked ground which

isn’t

road(way), e.g. a space for parking just a couple of cars.

I would call it the ‘carriageway’ in UK English. Bear in mind that paved roads for vehicles only became widespread in the post WWI period.

Roadway in BrE refers to the part of the road intended for vehicles, in contrast to the pavement (sidewalk) or verge (nature strip). (As suggested by OP)
The word «thoroughfare» is non-specific, it could be a bridlepath or a motorway. The older distinction between ‘highways and Byways’ doesn’t cover this modern distinction either.

All true, and good points (though like Ewie, I’d mainly associate the «carriageway» with a dual carriageway). I suspect, too, that most people from our part of the world would call it a «footpath» rather than a pavement.

Well, believe it or not, the

technical

British word for the American pavement is… pavement! But I guess only road engineers would know that — or people (like me) who translate their writings. Certainly I’d use road/roadway/highway in everyday speech.

But for the record, a British composite pavement (concrete base layer + bitumen top layer) is a US mixed pavement, and a UK rigid pavement (all concrete) is an inflexible pavement in the US.

I’m not sure whether Aussie is considered a form of BE, but down under, they call the paved road simply the «bitumen,» pronounced bitch-oo-min» more or less.

(the full, name of that stuff, I believe, is «bituminous asphalt»)

But for the record, a British composite pavement (concrete base layer + bitumen top layer) is a US mixed pavement, and a UK rigid pavement (all concrete) is an inflexible pavement in the US.

These might be terms a highway engineer would use, but we common folk never refer to a concrete highway as «inflexible pavement.» We just call it «concrete.»

Just to confuse things further, Americans usually refer to the black stuff of which the road is made as either asphalt or blacktop. I’ve heard the word «tarmac» used, but rarely, and only to refer to airport runways.

Pavement can be this substance, or it can be concrete.

As long as we’re headed down this road, there’s also «chip seal» around here.

From Wiki:

Chip seal is a pavement surface treatment that combines one or more layer(s) of asphalt with one or more layer(s) of fine aggregate. In the United States, chip seals are typically used on rural roads carrying lower traffic volumes, and the process is often referred to as «asphaltic surface treatment». In Australia and New Zealand, chip sealing is referred to as a «sprayed seal» or «tarseal» and is used on a larger percentage of roads, both rural and urban.[1]

Can’t we please just have «road»?

This is becoming tiresome.

What would you say the road surface was made of, Mr E?

I’d say it was made of tarmac, Mr T

Hi Scholiast,
Well I supose the short answer to your question is no ; since in the context of

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What British word refers to[B][COLOR=»#FF0000″] the surface of a road [/COLOR][/B]or street?[/FONT]

«Road» is not the correct answer.
As Keith has pointed out the correct answer is not use in everyday speech. Then perhaps «roadsurface» is an acceptable compromise.

ps. What if the roadsurface was «asphalt», then «tarmac» couldn’t be the correct answer in the context of the OP.

can’t we please just have «road»?

This is becoming tiresome.

thanks a billion, guys.

As long as we’re headed down this road, there’s also «chip seal» around here.

From Wiki:

Chip seal is a pavement surface treatment that combines one or more layer(s) of asphalt with one or more layer(s) of fine aggregate. In the United States, chip seals are typically used on rural roads carrying lower traffic volumes, and the process is often referred to as «asphaltic surface treatment». In Australia and New Zealand, chip sealing is referred to as a «sprayed seal» or «tarseal» and is used on a larger percentage of roads, both rural and urban.[1]

Thank you all. You, guys, have turned this post into a mine of valuable information.

In BrE I’d call it either the roadway or the carriageway.

I’d call the material on its surface tarmac (if it appeared to be tarmacadam) or metalling.

Pavement in British English refers to the surfaced walk for pedestrians beside a street or road (in British English); the American word for this is sidewalk.

Greetings

A footnote to this discussion: a letter from a reader first published in the (London) Times on Christmas Day 1889, and republished in yesterday’s edition, uses «pavement» to mean the entire road (Fleet St in London, which was «packed with a mob…»), and concludes:

«Surely the Commissioner of Police could take measures to keep the sidewalk clear, and let the wagons keep the roadway open».

It appears that, like «mad» (in the sense of «angry») and «fall» (in the sense of «autumn»), «sidewalk» has a BrE pedigree which AmE has retained, but BrE has largely forgotten.

Greetings

A footnote to this discussion: a letter from a reader first published in the (London) Times on Christmas Day 1889, and republished in yesterday’s edition, uses «pavement» to mean the entire road (Fleet St in London, which was «packed with a mob…»), and concludes:

«Surely the Commissioner of Police could take measures to keep the sidewalk clear, and let the wagons keep the roadway open».

It appears that, like «mad» (in the sense of «angry») and «fall» (in the sense of «autumn»), «sidewalk» has a BrE pedigree which AmE has retained, but BrE has largely forgotten.

Thanks for the information.