Itinerary

How to spell itinerary

9 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce itinerary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does itinerary mean?

1. nounA planned route or detailed schedule of a journey, including stops, dates, and arrangements.

Itinerary in a sentence

• The travel agent emailed a full itinerary for the two-week trip.

• Our itinerary lists three cities and the hotel for each night.

Where does itinerary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin itinerarium, meaning an account of a journey or a record of a route, which was built on the noun iter (genitive itineris), literally 'a journey' or 'a road'. The Romans used itinerarium for the practical travel documents that listed the towns, distances, and stopping points along a road, so the modern sense of a planned schedule of travel sits remarkably close to the original. English took the word in during the early 1400s, partly through medieval Latin and ecclesiastical usage, where it described pilgrims' route records. The same iter root also feeds 'itinerant', meaning someone who travels from place to place, which is a useful memory anchor. The spelling trap lives in that unstressed middle: the word is built on itiner, with an 'i' then 'e', and people who say it quickly tend to drop the syllable and write 'itinary' or swap the vowels into 'itenerary'.

How the word is built

• itiner- (from Latin iter, itineris: journey, road)
• -ary (noun suffix: a thing relating to)