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Causeway

Route raised up on an embankment

  • 8 min read
  • 5 chapters
Empty Singapore-Malaysia Causeway during the Malaysia COVID-19 lockdown.
Lionel Lim · CC BY 2.0

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Etymology

When first used, the word causeway appeared in a form such as "causey way", making clear its derivation from the earlier form "causey". This word seems to have come from the same source by two different routes. It derives ultimately, from the Latin for heel, calx, and most likely comes from the trampling technique to consolidate earthworks.

Originally, the construction of a causeway used earth that had been trodden upon to compact and harden it as much as possible, one layer at a time, often by slaves or flocks of sheep. Today, this work is done by machines. The same technique would have been used for road embankments, raised river banks, sea banks and fortification earthworks.

The second derivation route is simply the hard, trodden surface of a path. The name by this route came to be applied to any firmly surfaced road. It is now little-used except in dialect and in the names of roads which were originally notable for their solidly made surface. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica states: "causey, a mound or dam, which is derived, through the Norman-French caucie (cf. modern chaussée), from the late Latin via calciata, a road stamped firm with the feet (calcare, to tread)."

The word is comparable in both meanings with the French chaussée, from a form of which it reached English by way of Norman French. The French adjective chaussée carries the meaning of having been given a hardened surface and is used to mean either paved or shod. As a noun chaussée is used on the one hand for a metalled carriageway, and on the other for an embankment with or without a road.

Other languages have a noun with similar dual meaning. In Welsh, it is sarn. The Welsh is relevant here, as it also has a verb sarnu, meaning to trample. The trampling and ramming technique for consolidating earthworks was used in fortifications and there is a comparable, outmoded form of wall construction technique, used in such work and known as pisé, a word derived not from trampling but from ramming or tamping. The Welsh word cawsai translates directly to the English word 'causeway'; it is possible that, with Welsh being a lineal linguistic descendant of the original native British tongues, the English word derives from the Welsh.

A transport corridor that is carried instead on a series of arches, perhaps approaching a bridge, is a viaduct; a short stretch of viaduct is called an overpass. The distinction between the terms causeway and viaduct becomes blurred when flood-relief culverts are incorporated, though generally a causeway refers to a roadway supported mostly by earth or stone, while a bridge supports a roadway between piers (which may be embedded in embankments). Some low causeways across shore waters become inaccessible when covered at high tide.

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