Traverse

How to spell traverse

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce traverse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does traverse mean?

1. verbTo travel across or through an area or surface.
2. nounA route or movement across something, especially a sideways climb or crossing.

Traverse in a sentence

• verb

  The hikers planned to traverse the ridge before nightfall.

• noun

  The climbers attempted a difficult traverse along the cliff face.

• verb

  The new pipeline will traverse three counties.

• noun

  The surveyor recorded each traverse in the field notebook.

Where does traverse come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin transversare, 'to cross over', which was built from trans 'across' and vertere 'to turn'. Old French reshaped it into traverser, 'to cross or pass through', and English borrowed it during the 1300s. The same vertere root quietly powers a whole family of English words, including 'convert', 'reverse', and 'version', all of which involve some kind of turning. The spelling holds onto the 'trans' idea of crossing even though the modern form has worn the second 'n' away, so it helps to picture moving 'trans-verse', turning your way across something. In mountaineering and surveying the word also took on specialised technical senses, but they all trace back to that simple idea of going across.

How the word is built

• tra- (from trans: across)
• verse (from vertere: to turn) = literally to turn across