As a noun, it is the movement of vehicles, people, or data along a route. As a verb, it can mean to trade or deal in something, especially illegally.
It comes from Old Italian 'traffico', meaning 'trade' or 'commerce', probably from 'trafficare' meaning 'to trade'. The sense of vehicles moving developed later as streets filled with commercial movement.
Originally, 'traffic' was about buying and selling, not cars and buses. Internet companies still talk about 'web traffic', reminding us that the real product being moved around isn’t cars—it’s attention.
Beyond vehicles, 'traffic' is used in 'human trafficking', where women and girls have disproportionately been victims of sexual exploitation and forced labor. The neutral-sounding term can obscure the gendered violence embedded in many trafficking practices.
Distinguish clearly between vehicle traffic and human trafficking; when discussing human trafficking, name the specific harms and affected groups rather than using euphemistic shorthand.
["vehicle flow","road congestion","human trafficking","sex trafficking","labor trafficking"]
Survivors, many of them women and girls, have led advocacy and legal reforms to expose trafficking networks and shift language toward centering victims' rights.
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