asphalt

UK/ˈæsfælt/US/ˈæsfɔlt/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,410 of 15,258leans written

Asphalt is the black mix of tar and stone that road surfaces are made of. Hot, sticky, and smelling of summer when it is first laid.

The word covers both the sticky black binder and the finished surface. British English tends to say tarmac for the same thing, after the tar macadam process, and American English says asphalt or blacktop. It occurs naturally as well as being made, and the tar pits at La Brea are asphalt seeping up from below. It works as a verb too, since a road can be asphalted.

Definitions of asphalt

1nounasphaltThe black tar-and-stone mixture used to surface roads.B2+
“The asphalt was soft in the heat.”

Where it comes from

Ancient Greek
ἄσφαλτος — asphalt, bitumen
Latin
asphaltum
English, today
asphalt

From Latin asphaltum, from Ancient Greek ἄσφαλτος (“asphalt, bitumen”). Displaced native eorþtyrewa (literally, "earth-tar").

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Materials & Substances

First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

asphalt in the wild

In American English, the material is commonly referred to as asphalt.
Bitumen
To help avoid confusion, the terms "liquid asphalt", "asphalt binder", or "asphalt cement" are used in the U.S. to distinguish it from asphalt concrete.
Bitumen
Over centuries, these asphalt deposits trapped numerous prehistoric animals, preserving their skeletal remains.
La Brea Tar Pits
A pothole is a pot-shaped depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement.
Pothole
Water first weakens the underlying soil; traffic then fatigues and breaks the poorly supported asphalt surface in the affected area.
Pothole

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary