Traveled

How to spell traveled

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce traveled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does traveled mean?

1. verbPast tense of travel: made a journey from one place to another.

Traveled in a sentence

• Last summer they traveled across three states by car.

• The auditor traveled to the regional office every quarter.

Where does traveled come from?

Language of origin: French

The word descends from the Old French travailler, which meant 'to toil, to labour, or to suffer', and behind that lies the Late Latin trepalium, the name of a three-staked instrument of torture (from tres 'three' and palus 'stake'). Travelling in the medieval world was so arduous and dangerous that the same word covered both painful labour and going on a journey, which is why English 'travail' (hard toil) and 'travel' (going somewhere) are twins sprung from one root. The journeying sense settled into English in the 1300s and gradually drifted away from the idea of suffering. The single-l American past tense 'traveled' reflects a spelling reform popularised by Noah Webster, who argued that the final l should not double when the stress falls on the first syllable. That logic is why the American form keeps one l while British and Canadian writers double it to 'travelled', and that doubling question is the spelling trap here.

How the word is built

• travel (to journey)
• -ed (past tense suffix)

British and American spelling

Traveled is the American spelling. British English spells it travelled.