Talk:Tarmac

Requested move 22 May 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved – Rough consensus for making the dab page. — JFG talk 12:27, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Tarmac (disambiguation) → Tarmac – Tarmacadam is the original but not the main topic for Tarmac, so the latter should not redirect to the former. jnestorius(talk) 09:31, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support "Tarmac" is commonly used in the modern day to refer to asphalt, not the original tarmac.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 09:59, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * NB that the tarmacadam article was located at tarmac until this move a week ago. Whether that is the correct title for that article should also be addressed as tarmac appears far more common that tarmacadam for the tar + macadam road surface (nb the near 10:1 differential between Google Books hits for the former and the latter).  —  AjaxSmack  20:36, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The article about Hooley's material cannot be at tarmac because it's not the PRIMARYTOPIC for tarmac.
 * As to what name to move the article on Hooley's material to, I chose tarmacadam over tarmac (some disambiguation or other) per WP:NATURAL.
 * You can disagree with #2 without affecting the present move discussion; if you disagree with #2 you can start a separate move discussion for that article. OTOH if you disagree with #1 then that does affect this. jnestorius(talk) 22:01, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Whatever the resolution is, please fix all incoming links BEFORE carrying out any page moves. Cheers! bd2412  T 13:36, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. To me here in England, "tarmac" means a mixture of asphalt and small stones (and perhaps also sand?) used as road surfacing. Not pure asphalt. The long spelling "tarmacadam" is little heard of around here. The companies listed in Tarmac (disambiguation) are notable, but people have much less need to routinely be concerned with them, than the common road and pavement (USA: sidewalk) surfacing material. (There are plenty of tarmac pavements around where I live.) Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:07, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * — it sounds as though "tarmac", for you, means asphalt concrete rather than Hooley's obsolete material. jnestorius(talk) 09:33, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. No-brainer. The historical material Tarmacadam is simply not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term "tarmac" today. The other uses, including materials now used to replace tarmacadam that are also known as "tarmac", as well as airport tarmacs, are more prominent at this time. appears to be confused as to what the tarmacadam article covers.--Cúchullain t/ c  15:25, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. Something of an international can of worms I suspect! But by far the best thing is to have a DAB at this particular term. Andrewa (talk) 16:36, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support lot of the links for Tarmac are about the Airport meaning, so best that it is a dab Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:05, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support since the original tarmacadam material is not what this term means any more. Disambiguation is good. Dicklyon (talk) 21:26, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion
In Australia, bitumen almost universally means a blackish roadmaking material (perhaps it's several different materials), and that's the common term for any sealed road using such material. The terms asphalt and tar are sometimes used as synonyms for bitumen in this sense, and again that would be the primary meaning of those terms... we're a big, sparsely populated country with lots of both sealed and unsealed roads, and many Australians spend a lot of time driving long distances so they're very important to us. But tarmac means the sealed area of an airfield, probably because the main place the word is encountered is in Biggles books. Or that's my experience. It seems something of a can of worms, as I said above. Andrewa (talk) 16:36, 29 May 2018 (UTC) CN¥

more incorrect usage?
There reads: Tarmac, colloquial term often applied incorrectly to any paved surface of an airport, regardless of material Apparently, also paved surface anywhere: for example, List of World Rally Championship rallies has "tarmac" as the surface of some rallies, while I believe there should read "asphalt". 109.240.236.130 (talk) 02:41, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect vs colloquial usage
Can we have a discussion about gather the use of tarmac is incorrect. I know within the aviation community islets classified as incorrect because it doesn’t refer to a specific area of the airside potions of the airport.

However in general usage it is well known to mean the airside area of airports collectively both by laypeople and also officially by the government in describing a tarmac delay.

It seems to me that because the “incorrect” usage is limited to a specific industry and both dictionaries, the government, and general use all point to the same use, it is not incorrect but rather colloquial which notes that it isn’t used in this way in a formal aviation context. Hutima (talk) 15:02, 30 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is silly to say it is an “incorrect” usage when many people, and not just the news media, use it commonly. Language evolves. Hermanoere (talk) 13:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Why do Americans use this word exclusively to refer to airports?
I found this old Usenet posting. I think the incident he is referring to is TWA_Flight_847 hijacking in 1985. Can anyone confirm if this is when the American usage of the word tarmac came into common usage?

"First time I heard it used as a substitute for ramp was during a airliner hijacking, the one in which the US Navy diver was shot by the hijackers. The British commentator referred to his body being thrown out out of the AC on to the "tarmac", which was what Americans call asphalt. The wiz-bangs from the network news thought they heard a technical term, and instantly adopted the word tarmac to mean ramp. When I retired in '93, it was still called ramp in the Air Force, but tarmac by the press."

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.aviation.military/c/o9Py4zGay98/m/QNA1DjzCyIYJ

Fxm87 (talk) 20:32, 21 August 2020 (UTC)