tarmac
Definitions
General English
- trademark (written as Tarmac)a trademark for a hard road surface made of tar mixed with small stones
Aviation
- noun the runway and taxiways of an airport
Real Estate
- a trade name for a material used for surfacing roads
Origin & History of “tarmac”
The term tarmac commemorates the name of John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836), a Scottish civil engineer who developed a method of levelling roads and covering them with gravel. Setting the gravel in tar produced in the 1880s the term tarmacadam, and in 1903 the abbreviated form tarmac was registered as a trademark. By 1919 the word was being used in British English as a synonym for ‘runway’.
