Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
WordNet
n. a lane at sea that is a regularly used route for vessels [syn: seaway, sea lane, ship route]
a route followed by traders (usually in caravans)
Wikipedia
A trade route is a logistical network identified as a series of pathways and stoppages used for the commercial transport of cargo. The term can also be used to refer to trade over bodies of water. Allowing goods to reach distant markets, a single trade route contains long distance arteries, which may further be connected to smaller networks of commercial and noncommercial transportation routes. Among notable trade routes was the Amber Road, which served as a dependable network for long-distance trade. Maritime trade along the Spice Route became prominent during the Middle Ages, when nations resorted to military means for control of this influential route. During the Middle Ages, organizations such as the Hanseatic League, aimed at protecting interests of the merchants, and trade became increasingly prominent.
In modern times, commercial activity shifted from the major trade routes of the Old World to newer routes between modern nation-states. This activity was sometimes carried out without traditional protection of trade and under international free-trade agreements, which allowed commercial goods to cross borders with relaxed restrictions. Innovative transportation of modern times includes pipeline transport and the relatively well-known trade involving rail routes, automobiles, and cargo airlines.
Usage examples of "trade route".
The Petchenegs, sometimes called Cumans, had swept across the trade route to Baghdad, and they had almost cut Kiev off from Constantinople by driving their hordes into the lands north of the Black Sea.
A man with good legs could walk all around it in five minutes, but you could have done the same thing with the first settlement of Troy, which also was built around a spring and on a trade route.
All of 'em hoping the Deng fleet wouldn't follow if they ran this way, across the Void, not with richer worlds to tempt them along the main trade route.
Anyway, however ardently they may pay court, I always suspect that they already have a wife at home, probably other wives at the end of every trade route they travel.
That could be the trade route to Xanth that King Trent sought to establish.
The Empire has been working on a device to restrict hyperspace escape and were planning to use Delrakkin as a testing area, since it is on the end of an old hyperspace trade route.
The nature of the Tripoint mass was a fact to memorize, in school, a trade route on which Pell depended.
They knew its location because it was on the trade route, as was their own town of Atafi.
The two men explained how they would help him get to Turkey by following the ancient trade route to Iskenderun, a seacoast city in Turkey, just across the border from Syria.