A turnpike is a main road or highway where drivers may have to pay a toll to use it. In older usage, it referred to a toll gate across a road.
From "turn" and "pike," originally describing a barrier made of pointed poles that could be turned to let people pass after paying. Over time, the name shifted from the gate itself to the entire toll road.
The "pike" in turnpike was literally a spiky pole blocking the road—like an old‑school boom gate with teeth. The word survives even where the physical gates are gone, a fossil of how roads used to be controlled one gate at a time.
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