Macadam

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Super, who’s this?

This is Angie from Arlington, Texas.

Hi, Angie, welcome to the program.

Hi.

Okay, so my word is macadam.

I grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and it’s a word we always use for blacktop asphalt.

And nobody down here knows it, and I was just wondering if, what’s up with my word?

This was part of your everyday speech?

You would say, go follow the macadam down two miles and turn off on the gravel road?

No, it was more like, we’re going to play on the macadam playground today, or we just got a new macadam parking lot.

You know, we just, yeah, I guess every day we used it instead of asphalt.

Very interesting. Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Yeah. Now, is Carlisle in the southwest? Where is it?

Yeah, kind of south central. It’s really close to Harrisburg.

Very interesting. And how did you spell it?

Oh, my goodness. I think it was like M-E-C-A-D-E-M, I think.

Yep, yep. Well, we can help you with that.

Originally, McAdam referred to a kind of paving, a kind of paved road.

And the name goes back to a guy named, guess what, John McAdam.

He was a Scotsman in the early 1800s.

And Angie, it’s kind of hard to imagine a time without asphalt, isn’t it?

The pre-asphalt period.

But there was such a time, as we know, sort of between dirt roads and asphalt.

There was this period of time where people were trying to figure out different ways to pave roads for all these new vehicles.

And this guy, John McAdam from Scotland, figured out a way to do it using gravel.

And so he developed this special kind of surface, and people started adopting that as they were paving new roads.

And there were a couple of macadam roads in the United States before asphalt was invented.

And they were famous roads in both Maryland and then along the Cumberland Road.

And that’s the reason I asked about southwestern Pennsylvania, because the Cumberland Road goes right across southwestern Pennsylvania.

And the term macadam is stuck around, especially in that area.

When people are talking about a kind of surface, a kind of road surface.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, I lived in Cumberland County, so…

Well, there you go.

Okay, so it is completely different than asphalt, though.

Yeah, yeah.

In fact, macadam was sort of a rocky gravel kind of surface.

And get this, if your friends are giving you a hard time about macadam, you can ask them, well, do you know where the term tarmac comes from?

You know, on the surface at an airport?

Yeah.

That’s short for tar-bound macadam.

They used to use that gravelly surface and then mix it in with tar.

That was sort of a new type of surface.

And it was called tar-bound macadam and then later shortened to the trademark named tarmac.

And so, you know, you hear about the president’s plane stopping on the tarmac now.

So tarmac is connected to the word that you’ve been using, macadam.

Very nice.

Thank you very much.

I told my mom about me calling in, and she’s going to be very excited to hear where it came from, actually.

She’s going to be excited to hear that you’re not crazy.

Well, you know, she’s still out on that question.

Thanks, Angie.

Well, we hope this helps.

Take care.

Yes, it does.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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