> > >Then again, what is Anglo-Saxon for "road"?)
> >
> > Uh, road (or maybe rad)
>
> Actually, "Straet" (Street) or "Weg" (Way) are the common AS words - Rad
> generally means "Riding" or "Expedition". It *is* thematically related to
> "Road", but "Road" is really: "that place where you go riding". (Rad is
also
> one of the AS runes, whose meaning is "Ride" or "go on an journey").
>
> "Weg" gets a lot of use: "By the way", Highway", "Out of the Way",
> "Wayfarer", "Waybread" (yep, that's AS, Tolkien didn't invent the term),
> etc. The Saxons even had a word for "Highway Robbery" (Wegreafa, from
> Weg+Reaf "to plunder", whence "reaver").
The Old Norse word gata and Old English word geat are both words originally meaning 'a way through.' In English it came to predominantly mean a way through a wall or fence, so we get the word gate. Gate is seen in street names in the north of England, but generally does not refer to an opening. The Vikings used their word to mean a way through a settlement, so it came to have the meaning of street e.g. Coppergate - 'The Street of the cup makers'.
Cheers
DARRAN
'What song the Syrens sang, or what name
Achilles assumed when he hid himself among
the women, although puzzling questions,
are not beyond *all* conjecture.
Sir Thomas Browne
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