street

English street comes from Old English strēt, borrowed early from Late Latin (via) strāta, meaning 'paved road.' That in turn comes from Latin strātus, the past participle of sternō, 'to stretch out, spread, or pave,' tracing back to the Proto-Indo-European root *sterh₃-, 'to stretch out, extend.'

The word entered English so early, as a Roman-influenced term for a paved road, that it settled into everyday use without much semantic drift — it named a built, surfaced way rather than any old path. Its vowel sound did shift dramatically over the centuries, from an Old English /eː/ through Middle and Early Modern English forms, before settling into today's pronunciation by the Great Vowel Shift.

It's a doublet of estrade and stratum, both also descending from Latin strātus, and it's related to strew, since Old English strēowian ('to strew, scatter') shares the same deeper root as Latin sternō.