A road on which turnpikes are or were erected for the collection of tolls; hence, a main road or highway, formerly maintained by a toll levied on cattle and wheeled vehicles. Also fig.
1719. The Post-Boy, 21 May, 2/2. One [House] with … the Advantage of a Turnpike Road,… is to be lett or sold.
1745. Wesley, Wks. (1830), I. 485. Turnpike roads were not known in that part of England till some years after.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., I. xi. I. (1869), I. 156. Some of the counties in the neighbourhood of London petitioned the Parliament against the extension of the turnpike roads into the remoter counties.
1845. McCulloch, Taxation, Introd. (1852), 33. It was not … till after the peace of Paris, in 1763, that turnpike-roads began to be extended to all parts of the kingdom. Ibid., II. x. 377. It has … been proposed to abolish tolls, as being essentially partial and unfair, and to raise a fund for constructing and repairing turnpike roads by a tax on property assessed and collected in the same way … as the rate for cross and parish roads.
1875. W. S. Hayward, Love agst. World, 16. After an hour’s ride, by cross-country lanes and by-paths, they struck into the turnpike road.
