Middle English rōde ‘A Ride’ and its Compounds

In a recent note, Briggs presented evidence that Middle English (ME) rode 'a ride' developed the new sense 'road' in the middle of the seventeenth century and that this is the source of the modern word 'road', thus supporting the etymology given in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which has at times been questioned. That note referred briefly to compounds such as rodeweye and rodestrete. Subsequent study shows that these compounds give strong additional support to the case for semantic shift as the origin of modern 'road'.