Other forms: turnpikes
A turnpike is a road on which a toll is charged. The turnpike road, a turnpike trust, pay at the turnpike.
British turnpike trusts built and maintained most of the main roads in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, charging tolls at gates, and they transformed travel times before the railways ended them. In America turnpike survives as the name of several major toll roads. The word originally named the spiked barrier itself — a pike that turned to let travellers past once they had paid.
1nounturnpikeA road on which a toll is charged.
“In the eighteenth century, travellers paid a fee at each gate along the turnpike.”
turnpike is a toll road.
Middle English turnpyke was a spiked barrier across a road, from turn plus pike. It named the gate first and then the road behind it.
Middle English
turnpyke — spiked barrier across a road
English, today
turnpike
From Middle English turnpyke (“spiked barrier across a road”), originally used to block access to such a road until a toll was paid. Equivalent to modern turn + pike.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA