cabotage

/ˈkæbətɪd͡ʒ/

Etymology

Borrowed from French cabotage (“coasting trade”), from caboter (“to travel by the coast”). It originally (16th c.) referred to restrictions allowing only French ships to trade or transport between French ports. Other countries adopted this concept and extended it to land and air travel.

cabotage means The transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 89 out of 100.

Why this word is great

CABOTAGE — [Noun] The exclusive legal right to transport goods or passengers between points within a single nation's borders, a privilege reserved by statute for national carriers. Its etymology traces a coastal voyage: from the French cabotage ("coasting trade"), from caboter ("to sail along the coast"), itself from Middle French cabo ("cape, headland"), from Spanish cabo. Unlike "coasting," which denotes the simple nautical act of following a shoreline, or "domestic trade," a broad and generic economic category, cabotage is a precise juridical concept of sovereignty and protection. It is the statutory fence that keeps a foreign truck from hauling freight from Sydney to Perth, the worn leather of a trucker's logbook on a Houston-to-Dallas run, and the ancient principle that a Greek ferry may island-hop in the Aegean where a Turkish one may not—a quiet assertion that even in a borderless world, the map is still scored with invisible, domestic shores.

noun

The transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country.“Cabotage traffic may be carried by a foreign carrier on special permission of the civil aeronautics authorities […].”
The right to engage in such transport.“Cabotage, used as a legal term, here refers to the right to transport goods or passengers between ports of a country.”
The exclusive right of a country to control such transport.“Professor Levine distinguishes two kinds of cabotage: "primary cabotage" which can be compared with ninth freedom cabotages and "long-haul limited cabotage" which can be compared with eighth freedom cabotage […].”