different between traffic vs footfall

English

Alternative forms

• traffick

Etymology

From Middle French trafique, traffique (“traffic”), from Italian traffico (“traffic”) from trafficare (“to carry on trade”). Potentially from Vulgar Latin *tr?nsfr?c?re (“to rub across”); Klein instead suggests the Italian has ultimate origin in Arabic ????????? (tafr?q, “distribution, dispersion”), reshaped to match the native prefix tra- (“trans-”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: tr?f'?k, IPA^(key): /?t?æf?k/
• Rhymes: -æf?k

Noun

traffic (usually uncountable, plural traffics)

1. Moving pedestrians or vehicles, or the flux or passage thereof.

2. Commercial transportation or exchange of goods, or the movement of passengers or people.
3. Illegal trade or exchange of goods, often drugs.
4. Exchange or flux of information, messages or data, as in a computer or telephone network.
   1. In CB radio, formal written messages relayed on behalf of others.
   2. (advertising) The amount of attention paid to a particular printed page etc. in a publication.
      • 1950, Advertising & Selling (volume 43, part 2, page 53)

        Those fixed locations which are sold to advertisers become preferred according to the expected page traffic.

5. Commodities of the market.

   • You'll see a draggled damsel / From Billingsgate her fishy traffic bear.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

traffic (third-person singular simple present traffics, present participle trafficking, simple past and past participle trafficked)

1. (intransitive) To pass goods and commodities from one person to another for an equivalent in goods or money; to buy or sell goods

   Synonym: trade

2. (intransitive) To trade meanly or mercenarily; to bargain.
3. (transitive) To exchange in traffic; to effect by a bargain or for a consideration.

Derived terms

• trafficker
• trafficking

Translations

References

• traffic in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

English

Alternative forms

• foot-fall

Etymology

foot +? fall

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?f?t?f??l/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?f?t?f?l/

Noun

footfall (countable and uncountable, plural footfalls)

1. (countable) The sound made by a footstep.
   • 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, act 2, scene 2,

     […] like hedgehogs which

     Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount

     Their pricks at my footfall.

   • 1916, Rawindran?th Th?kur, "The Hungry Stones," in The Hungry Stones And Other Stories,

     I heard many footfalls, as if a large number of persons were rushing down the steps.
2. (chiefly Britain, uncountable) Foot (pedestrian) traffic.
   • 2008 December 9, "Bargains galore in battle of the high street," The Scotsman:

     With high-street stores desperate to increase footfall and buck the financial downturn, retailers have started issuing discount vouchers.

References

• “footfall”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.