On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 at 09:59:54 in message
, Bob Gardner
wrote:

It bugs me, too. Most ramps are concrete, not tar-macadam, but the newsies
think that saying tarmac makes them sound knowledgeable.

I would have thought it was English 'oldies' like me who might say it in
all innocence. My dictionary is a bit old (1982) but says:

Tarmac. Trade name (often not cap.) a paving material that consists of
crushed stone rolled and bound with a mixture of tar and bitumen. esp.
as used for a road, airport runway, etc. Full Name Tarmacadam.

The Tarmac group is a construction company in the UK.

A Google search found the following:

"John Loudon McAdam (born 1756) designed roads using broken stones laid
in symmetrical, tight patterns and covered with small stones to create a
hard surface. McAdam discovered that the best stone or gravel for road
surfacing had to be broken or crushed, and then graded to a constant
size of chippings. John Loudon McAdam's design, called "macadam roads,"
provided the greatest advancement in road construction at the time.

The water bound Macadam roads were the forerunners of the bitumen-based
binding that was to become tarmacadam. The word tarmacadam was shortened
to the now familiar tarmac. The first tarmac road to be laid was in
Paris in 1854."

So it has a long history!


--
David CL Francis