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A toll road (also called a: tollway, turnpike, toll highway, or express toll route) is a privately or publicly built road for which the user of the road is required to pay a fee, or toll.

The word turnpike comes from turn and pike, the latter in the old sense of an infantry weapon with a pointed steel or iron head on a long wooden shaft. It's the inclusion of turn here that suggests the pikes were the barrier, which could be turned aside about a vertical pivot to allow access.In an earlier time, the pike was a pole set on a vertical post, used for barring movement along a road. When the traveller paid the required fee, the pike was moved out of the way to allow the traveller to move on. In the early days of our toll roads, turnpike was applied to any important road.

People who used to hang about turnpikes for nefarious purposes were known as 'pikies'. The name survives today.