turnpike

Meanings

1. A frame consisting of two bars crossing each other at right angles and turning on a post or pin, to hinder the passage of animals, but admitting a person to pass between the arms.
2. A gate or bar set across a road to stop carriages, animals, and sometimes people, until a toll is paid.
3. A winding stairway.
4. A beam filled with spikes to obstruct passage; a cheval de frise.
5. A toll road, especially a toll expressway. In some places the clipped version, pike, is used for roads without tolls.
6. A trajectory on a finite time interval that satisfies an optimality criterion which is associated with a cost function.

1. To form (a road, etc.) in the manner of a turnpike road, or into a rounded form, as the path of a road.

Etymology

From Middle English turnpyke (“spiked barrier across a road”), originally used to block access to such a road until a toll was paid. Equivalent to modern turn + pike (“shaft”).