superhighwayn.
/ˈsuːpəˌhʌɪweɪ/, /ˈsjuːpəˌhʌɪweɪ/, U.S. /ˈsupərˌhaɪˌweɪ/ 1. North American. A wide main road with controlled access, esp. a dual carriageway, for high-speed traffic; a motorway. Also figurative.
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society > travel > means of travel > route or way > way, path, or track > road > [noun] > for wheeled vehicles > for fast motor traffic
speedway1903
motorway1906
superhighway1924
freeway1926
expresswayc1938
throughway1942
1924 Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Mich.) 18 Apr. 5/1 (heading) Wayne plans for super-highways. Still wider concrete roads, with no crossing delays.
1949 Word Study May 1/2 A superhighway toward..success.
1978 J. A. Michener Chesapeake xiii. 799 She found Route 2, which took her to Route 695, the superhighway circumnavigating Baltimore.
1998 Ancestry Sept. 50/1 Most of us have had the experience..of finding a familiar road cut off to make way for a superhighway or a new shopping mall.
2. Computing and Telecommunications. A route or network for the high-speed transfer of information. Cf. information superhighway n. at information n. Compounds 2, highway n. 5b.
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1971 Brit. Patent 1,229,864 1/1 Each group being served by an x bit parallel receive superhighway.
1981 N.Y. Times 8 Mar. iii. 8/4 His three sponsors want to build a communications network in space, a ‘super highway’.. to carry electronic mail, computer data, television images and telephone conversations.
1993 Electronic House Dec. 49/3 How does DirecTv/USSB compare with the much-talked-about future 500-channel fiber-optic superhighway?
2001 Business Times Singapore (Nexis) 8 Mar. 12 Our cellular superhighways are getting smoother.
2010 C. Sandler Laptops All-in-One for Dummies i. iii. 43 The CPU has to be matched with a fast bus (a superhighway of wires) that can move data around the machine quickly.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1924