What are the origins of the word "traffic"?

Answer 1

Excellent question - it's an unusual one. It first appeared in English around the 1500's as a 'forgeign' word - which kind of makes sense given that it was used to describe (in those days) the process of shipping and trade by ship. The noun and the verb ('to traffic') both go back to this shipping origin. The first recorded use of the word outside 'English' appears to be in Pisa (Italy) as trafficarre and traffico around 1325. It is speculated (but not universally agreed) that this might represent a combination of 'trans' (as in 'across') and 'facere' (latin for 'make'), which is a way of describing commerce or trade. There is also a suggestion it comes from the Arabic word tarrafaqa which means 'profit'.

Pisa was a major sea trading power in the 1300's (as were the Arabs), and there was a degree of 'borrowing' language going on in ports around the Mediterranean. If to us the Arab and Pisan words look 'different' it is because we are writing them. Most folk around ports wouldn't (couldn't) write in those days, so everything depended on the sound of a word. My theory is that the word probably started as Arabic, and Pisan (and Genoan and Venetian) traders picked it up because it sounded 'kind of' familiar in their own language and they found a way in their own language (Pisan) to 'explain it's origin'. I think the Pisans 'imagined' (wrongly) that there was a connection between the Latin and Arab words; but all that mattered was that they believed there was a connection and they felt comfortable using the Arab one to describe all of the sea-trading activity going on.