It is not an all-purpose synonym for "congested traffic." You can't have gridlock on a freeway.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Damn This Traffic Jam
Word of the day: gridlock. It means the grid is locked, as in north-south traffic remains in the intersection after its light turns red, preventing east-west traffic from moving when its light turns green.
It is not an all-purpose synonym for "congested traffic." You can't have gridlock on a freeway.
It is not an all-purpose synonym for "congested traffic." You can't have gridlock on a freeway.
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A bumper-to-bumper freeway backup attributable to gridlock elsewhere is not "gridlock on the freeway."
It would be a shame to take this very specific word and ruin it. You need grid + lock to = gridlock.
Well, I've certainly seen gridlock in Boston, even though the streets there are not on a regular 90-degree grid. I don't think we're diminishing the term gridlock if we allow it to include diagonal roads or curvy roads or elevated highways that are stopped because vehicles can't move on or off the ramps.
Phil Blanchard, you'll be stunned to learn, has a stricter definition still.
... If we're talking about a stretch of limited-access highway that is backed up as a result of something other than off-highway traffic, gridlock would indeed be the wrong term.
I'd ask what Phil's stricter definition is, but odds are it will be forthcoming with or without my request.
… To clarify, I mean if traffic is stopped on a limited-access highway because of traffic that is stopped on the ramps in true gridlock – be it a right-angle grid or otherwise – the vehicles on the highway are part of the gridlock.
At a minimum, I'd say:
If somebody's angry stab at the gas pedal would generate a broadside collision, it's gridlock. If any such collision would merely be a rear-ender, it's just a traffic jam.
Phil, as I understand it, demands landlocked immobility affecting multiple intersections.
If that's Phil's stricter definition, I agree with it. It does take more than one intersection to achieve gridlock. Otherwise, it's just intersectionlock
** Landlocked. **
... No schooners allowed.
... Coincidentally, there are in fact seagoing vessels that are regular elements of the Boston traffic nightmare. I rode in one a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.scubamom.com/travels/fallfoliage/ducktour.jpg
I did that tour, too, on my one visit to Boston!
" You need grid + lock to = gridlock."
Do you then need chair + man to = chairman?
Words and their meanings evolve. We had a phenomenon to describe, and a word that already described something similar, and we stretched. Sue us.
Yes, language evolves. And the battle to retain precision and specificity in language never ends. "Similar" should not be good enough, but people are lazy, and eventually we have to invent terms that would have been redundant 20 years earlier. Someday we'll have "gridlock that involves the locking of a grid, as opposed to just plain gridlock."
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