Other forms: roadsides
The roadside is the edge of a road. By the roadside, a roadside cafe, roadside assistance.
It is where things happen that nobody planned: roadside assistance, a roadside memorial, a roadside stall. In Britain the roadside verge is now a serious habitat for wildflowers, and councils cut it later for that reason.
1nounroadsideThe edge of a road.
“We stopped at the roadside to buy strawberries from a farmer's stall.”
roadside is an edge.
Middle English
rode
English
road
English, today
roadside
Built from
From road + -side. road comes from Middle English rode. From Middle English rode, rade (“ride, journey”), from Old English rād (“riding, hostile incursion”), from Proto-West Germanic raidu, from Proto-Germanic raidō (“a ride”), from Proto-Indo-European reydʰ- (“to ride”). a doublet of raid, acquired from Scots -. Cognates include West Frisian reed (paved trail/road, driveway). The current primary meaning of "street, way for traveling" originated relatively late — Shakespeare seemed to expect his audiences to find it unfamiliar — and probably arose through reinterpretation of roadway (“a way for riding on”) as saying way twice, in other words as a tautological compound.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA