road metal

American

noun

British.

broken stone, cinders, etc., used for making roads.

road metal British

noun

crushed rock, broken stone, etc, used to construct a road

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of road metal

First recorded in 1810–20

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

road metal

I had a medium-brown driveway that used chert road metal from the Meramec River region in Missouri.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 19, 2023

If the road metal be of soft material which wears easily, it will require constant supervision and small repairs whenever a rut or depression may appear.

From The Future of Road-making in America by Hulbert, Archer Bulter

They have then only to remove the top surface of road metal and the concrete cover in order to expose the pipe and get at the breach.

From Scientific American Supplement, No. 531, March 6, 1886 by Various

The stones have been taken for road metal, the earth to lay on the land.

From The Geological Story of the Isle of Wight by Hughes, J. Cecil

There is no road metal available in Mesopotamia.

From In Mesopotamia by Nicoll, Maurice

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023