Travel
verbTo go from one place to another, especially over a distance.
How to spell travel
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce travel
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does travel mean?
- verbTo go from one place to another, especially over a distance.
- nounThe act or activity of journeying from one place to another.
Travel in a sentence
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verb
They prefer to travel by train rather than fly.
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noun
The company covers all travel and accommodation costs.
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verb
Sound waves travel more slowly through air than through water.
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noun
International travel became much easier after the new rules were relaxed.
Where does travel come from?
Language of origin: French
Travel comes from the Old French verb travailler, which meant 'to toil' or 'to labour painfully', and it shares its root with the modern English word 'travail', meaning hard or distressing work. The deeper origin is the Late Latin trepalium, the name of an instrument of torture supposedly made from three stakes; the link reflects just how arduous a long journey once was. English borrowed the word in the 1300s, and at first 'travel' and 'travail' were essentially the same word, both carrying a sense of painful effort. Over the following centuries the meaning of 'travel' softened from 'suffer hardship on a journey' into the neutral modern sense of simply going from one place to another. The shared ancestry explains why some writers reach for an extra letter: the related 'travail' keeps its heavier spelling, while everyday 'travel' settles on a single l in the base form.
How the word is built
- travel (whole word from Old French travailler: to labour, to journey)
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