Driveway, Parkway, and Dooryard
Erik Deckers has the answer to George Carlin’s famous question: Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
Erik Deckers, Writing for
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Driveway, Parkway, and Dooryard
George Carlin once famously asked, “Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?” and the crowd went nuts. Of course, the crowd would go nuts for anything Carlin said, but that’s not important right now.
But Carlin’s razor wit notwithstanding, there’s a reason we park on driveways and drive on parkways—a perfectly sound and etymological reason, one that you can use the 37th time you see the question on Facebook.
Streets with ‘Way’ in the Name
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word way comes from the Old English word weg, which means “road, path, or course of travel.” It’s also from the Proto-Germanic wegaz. If a street is named, for example, “Pirates Way” or “Broadway,” it means the road may have once been a path. Or even better, a path used by pirates who sang show tunes.
Parkway
The word parkway is an Americanism, created between 1885 and 1890． Both the Random House Dictionary and Dictionary.com tell us the word is a simple mashup of both park and way. It’s literally a path to or through a park.
According to the New York City Parks Department, Eastern Parkway was the world’s first parkway, designed by architects Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted in 1866． Vaux and Olmsted originally started working together in 1857 to develop the Greensward Plan, which later became known as Central Park.
Their parkway was designed as a landscaped road for “pleasure-riding and driving” and led to Prospect Park, which was also designed by Vaux and Olmsted. You walked or drove on the path to, and through, the park with your horse and carriage.
Their two-mile design called for a 55-foot wide carriage drive between two pedestrian malls and four rows of trees. There were even side roads for delivery wagons. Eventually, the carriages and wagons were replaced by automobiles, the paths were paved over, and they became major commuter routes carrying heavy traffic into, and out of, the city.
While many parkways still maintain the landscaped median and shoulders, as well as its limited access and lack of pedestrian traffic, others only carry the name, and lack any natural aesthetic or beauty. The name parkway may remain, but rarely are they driven on for pleasure, especially during rush hour.
Driveway
But what about driveways? Those are so short you don’t drive on them so much as you slowly coast to a stop. They exist primarily as a place to park your vehicle, and to give heart attacks to fat guys shoveling after a snowstorm.
Despite their relatively short length, driveways are named for much longer roads you could drive on. The online Oxford Dictionary says a driveway refers to a short private road leading from a public road to a house or other building.
Like parkway, driveway is another Americanism. We began using driveway after the American Civil War, combining the words drive and way.
While most driveways are small and short—nothing more than a concrete slab between the road and our garages—some driveways can be rather long, like those leading up to commercial buildings or the large country estates one finds in Downton Abbey.
Dooryard
Another term for driveway is the word dooryard, which is used in New England, primarily in Maine, according to Martha Barnette, co-host of the radio show A Way With Words. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary says dooryard was first used in 1764, referring to the yard next to the door of the house. Just a couple of days ago, I found a tweet from Central Maine Power advising customers to stay clear of power lines while clearing snow from their dooryard.
Clearing snow from your dooryard, parking area, or roof? Please stay clear of overhead power lines! https://t.co/glQZwzsXfF
- — Central Maine Power (@cmpco) February 5, 2015
While the rest of the country calls that concrete slab between the road and the garage the driveway, some of our neighbors in the land of lobsters still apparently prefer the older term of dooryard.
So if you’re one of those people who likes to have an answer for everything, or if you respond to jokes with an explanation that starts with “Actually. . .,” now you have an answer to George Carlin’s classic question about parking on driveways and driving on parkways.
Parkways were unpaved paths that originally went to and through parks, and the word emerged when we were still traveling by horse and carriage. The word driveway came much later—when we were regularly driving cars—and we needed to describe the short road you drive on to get to your stately mansion.
This article was written by Erik Deckers. You can find his professional work as a content marketer here and his humor writing over here. You can find his author pages here on Barnes & Noble or here on Amazon.com.