“Hey! How come we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Huh? Amiright?!”

“你好！为什么我们要在parkways上开车，在driveways上停车呢？我这么说没错吧？”

This rusty one-liner has gotten plenty of mileage over the years, but the question is an answerable one.

这个老掉牙的俏皮话已经被说了好多年，但这个问题其实是有答案的。

one-liner：俏皮话

get a lot of mileage out of something：充分使用某物，比如汽车

The words drive and park existed long before automobiles. Languages evolve over time and a given term’s meaning is subject to dramatically change based on the whim of its users.

Drive和park这两个词早在汽车出现以前就存在了。语言会随着时间的推移而演变。某个既定词语的含义也会因为使用者的突发奇想而发生巨大的改变。

Back in the 1800s, for example, parking meant planting trees, flowers, and other bits of vegetation. A parking place, therefore, had nothing to do with stationary vehicles. Instead, it was a location specifically designed to encourage diverse, extensive plant growth for non-agricultural purposes.

早在19世纪初期，比如说，parking的含义是指种树、种花以及种植其他植物。因此，Parking place也就与静止不动的车辆毫无关联。相反，它指的是一个专门设计的让各种植物茂密生长的地方。在这里生长的植物并非与农业有关。

Yet, many were soon commandeered for an entirely different objective. "By the turn of the century, such parking areas were sometimes used to hold horse-drawn carriages on special occasions," historian Kirk Savage wrote. "When automobiles started to overrun cities in the early 20th century, parking areas were given over to car storage and the word began to refer to the cars themselves rather than the trees and grass they were replacing.”

然而，许多这样的地方很快就有了完全不同的用途。历史学家Kirk Savage写道：“在世纪交替之际，这样的地方（parking areas）在特殊的情况下偶尔会被用来固定马车。当汽车在20世纪初期开始在城市中泛滥时，parking areas被用于汽车存放，而这个词也开始指代汽车本身，而非由汽车所取代的树木和花草。”

During this transitional period, America’s parkways also began taking shape. Metropolitan reformers—who feared the health costs of industrial growth—started establishing wooded parks within cities nationwide, hoping their trees would make urban air more breathable. As automobiles rose in popularity, special car-friendly routes were carved through these parks. Unimaginatively, they were called parkways.

在世纪交替之际，美国的parkways也开始形成。大都市的改革者们由于担心工业的发展会以健康为代价，所以开始在全国各地的城市内建造各种带有树木的公园并希望这些树木可以让城市的空气更加清新。随着汽车越来越流行，公园内就安插了专为汽车设计的道路。所以，这些车道就被毫无想象力的人们称为parkways（林荫大道）。

So parkways have nothing to do with the actual parking of vehicles—but what about driveways? Well, that particular word has been around since at least 1884 and has essentially meant the same thing ever since—namely, a path that connects somebody’s private property to a public road. However, while lengthy driveways were once the norm (and, hence, enabled more driving), today’s average specimen is little more than a dinky personal parking station.

因此，parkways和实际的车辆停放毫无关系-那么driveways（私人车道）是什么意思呢？

好吧，这个特殊的词大约至少在1884年就出现了，而且它的含义一直没有变过-就是连接私人宅邸和大路的车道。然而，尽管当时的车道都是比较长的（因此，驾车的距离也更长）。如今，私人车道的平均长度都要比小巧紧凑的私人停车位稍大一点。

原文来源：Mental Floss

翻译&编辑：上海译锐翻译