Subject: RE: Folklore: Little orphant Annie - roundabout or
From: Rapparee - PM
Date: 17 Oct 19 - 06:38 PM

"roundabout (plural roundabouts)

    (chiefly Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and sometimes US) A road junction at which traffic streams circularly around a central island."

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In Canada, when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, we called these type of junctions "traffic circles". They were not common, but there was one in the city where I was born (Kingson, Ontario) and another in the city where we moved to (Hamilton, Ontario)
I never heard these called "roundabouts" till I spent a year in Great Britain and Ireland, where they had never heard of traffic circles, but called them roudabouts.
These seem to be coming back into fashion in Ontario and the British term, roundabout, has caught on and many younger folks are unfamiliar with the term traffic circle.