Word of the Day

: July 5, 2008

macadam

noun muh-KAD-um

What It Means

: a roadway or pavement of small closely packed broken stone

macadam in Context

We left the old city with much regret, passing from its quaint cobblestones to lumpy macadam, leaving our vacation behind and returning reluctantly to the workaday world.

Did You Know?

In 1783, inventor John Loudon McAdam returned to his native Scotland after amassing a fortune in New York City. He became the road trustee for his district and quickly set his inventiveness to remedying the terrible condition of local roads. After numerous experiments, he created a new road surfacing material made of bits of stone that became compressed into a solid mass as traffic passed over them. His invention revolutionized road construction and transportation, and engineers and the public alike honored him by using his name (respelled "macadam") as a generic term for the material or pavement made from it. He is further immortalized in the verb "macadamize," which names the process of installing macadam on a road.