traffic

«traffic» in Mova's school dictionary: The cars, buses, lorries, bikes and other vehicles moving… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (traffic — uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

1) The cars, buses, lorries, bikes and other vehicles moving on roads. tree →

2) The amount of movement of people, ships, planes or data: air traffic, internet traffic. tree →

3) Illegal buying and selling (traffic in drugs — adult use). tree →

sense in the lessons

In road safety: stop, look and listen before crossing; cross at traffic lights, zebra crossings or with a lollipop person/crossing guard; traffic drives on the left in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and on the right in the USA and Canada, so look the right way first; never play near traffic. In everyday life: traffic jams make people late. Phrases: traffic lights, heavy traffic, traffic jam, busy traffic, traffic cone, traffic warden, oncoming traffic, rush-hour traffic.

examples

• Wait for the green man at the traffic lights. tree →
• The traffic was very heavy this morning. tree →
• We were stuck in a traffic jam. tree →
• Look out for traffic before you cross. tree →
• In the UK traffic drives on the left. tree →
• In the USA traffic drives on the right. tree →
• Never play ball near traffic. tree →
• Air traffic controllers guide planes. tree →
• An old house stood there; it was in the large town with its busy traffic. tree →

note

Uncountable: «a lot of traffic», not «a traffic» or «traffics». Traffic lights: red = stop, amber/yellow = get ready or stop, green = go if safe. Which way to look first depends on the country: in the UK look right first; in the USA look left first.

In the corpora

• On a motorway, after a breakdown everyone gets out and waits behind the barrier, away from the traffic.
• Map apps guess traffic from data sent by many phones and can suggest a faster route.
• Crows in Japan drop walnuts at traffic lights for cars to crack, and crows can remember a human face for years.
• Some crows in Japan drop nuts at pedestrian crossings for cars to crack and pick them up safely when the lights stop the traffic.
• With no hunting, farming or traffic, wolves, elk, boar, lynx and even brown bears came back.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «traffic» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.