travel
Verbtravels
Noun pluraltravels (some meanings)
Often confused with trip and journey
Formstravels
Pluraltravels (some meanings)
- 1To make a journey or journeys, going from one place to another or throughout a region, often for pleasure or business.
They travel abroad several times a year for work.
Many families travel during the winter holidays.
UsageOften travel to, around or by: travel by train. Americans write traveled, traveling; British English doubles the l: travelled.
Similarrange
Note
The everyday sense carries an old hardship inside it. Middle English travelen meant "to make a laborious journey," altered from travaillen, "to toil," and its doublet travail still keeps the toil.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Middle English travelen meant to make a laborious journey. en.wiktionary.org
- Travelen was an alteration of travaillen, meaning to toil. fr.wiktionary.org
- Travail is a doublet of travel and retains the meaning to toil. en.wiktionary.org
- 2The act of making a journey; passage from one place to another.
Travel between the islands requires a long ferry ride.
She has always had a deep love of travel.
UsageFor one journey, say a trip or a journey (not
incorrect: a travel). Travel names the activity: air travel, a love of travel. - 3To go, or be conveyed, between places; to move or be transmitted.
News of the victory traveled quickly across the region.
Radio waves travel at the speed of light.
UsageCommon with fast or quickly: news travels fast.
- 4A spoken or written account of the journeys a person has made.
Her travels were published as a slim volume the following spring.
Readers loved his travels for their vivid descriptions of distant markets.
UsageOften with a possessive or of: his travels, the travels of Marco Polo.
Similartravelogue
Note
The plural can also become a book: a person's travels can be released, read and quoted. Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell's glossary Hobson-Jobson cites a word found 'in some old travels'. Here travels names a genre of narrative accounts, so the plural that means the journeys themselves also stands for the record of them.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell wrote the glossary Hobson-Jobson. en.wikipedia.org
- Hobson-Jobson describes a word as appearing 'in some old travels'. en.wikisource.org
Less common meanings
- 5The activity or traffic moving along a route or through a particular point.
Travel through the tunnel doubled after the new highway opened.
The old bridge will be closed to all travel until Monday.
Similartraffic
- 6In basketball, to move illegally by taking steps while holding the ball without dribbling it.
He traveled on the baseline and lost possession.
Rookies often travel when they panic under pressure.
Note
A referee's call, not a description of style: the player travels, with no object, and the whistle hands the ball to the other side as a turnover. The violation is about the feet, which move beyond the permitted limits while the ball is held. A player who keeps dribbling may cover any distance without traveling.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- A traveling violation gives possession to the opposing team. jr.nba.com
- Traveling involves movement beyond permitted limits while possessing the ball. official.nba.com
- Continuing a legal dribble imposes no traveling limit on distance covered. assets.fiba.basketball
- 7The movement of a machine part, or the distance it moves in a single stroke or press, such as the downward movement of a keyboard key.
Engineers reduced the travel of the valve to improve efficiency.
The suspension allows several inches of travel over rough ground.
Note
An engineer's measure of how far a part moves. A small drill press may have a travel of only 1.5 inches, and a handle shows a lot of travel when the tool is out of adjustment. The same word names both a specification and a fault.
- 8To toil or labor; to exert oneself with great effort.
We labour sore, and travel hard, and much Study is a Weariness to our Flesh; and of making many Books there is no End.
1719, William Tilly, The Acceptable SacrificeMan holds in constant service bound The blustering winds and seas; Nor suns disdain to travel hard Their master, man, to please;
1794, “Resignation”, in A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain.Volume 10Note
Here the old toil is still on the surface, the meaning that the journeying sense grew away from. It mostly appears in the phrase travel hard, set beside work and labor. Richard Baxter's collected Practical Works (1707) has men "work hard, and travel hard."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The journeying meaning developed from an earlier meaning involving toil. en.wiktionary.org
- Baxter's Practical Works was first collected and published in 1707. en.wikisource.org
- The quotation is attributed to Richard Baxter and contains the stated words. en.wiktionary.org
- 9The labor of childbirth; the effort and pain of giving birth.
Hard Labour is when more vehement Pains and dangerous Symptomes happen to Women in Travel, and continue a longer time.
1667, John Tanner, The hidden treasures of the art of physickNote
John Tanner's seventeenth-century medical book The hidden treasures of the art of physick speaks of women 'in Travel', and in travel there means 'in labor'. It belongs with the obsolete 'toil' verb in the travail family.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- John Tanner wrote the seventeenth-century medical book The hidden treasures of the art of physick. epapers.bham.ac.uk
- Tanner uses the exact words 'in Travel' about women experiencing childbirth labor. en.wiktionary.org
- The childbirth sense belongs to the travail family, alongside the obsolete verb meaning to toil. en.wiktionary.org
- 10To compel or force a person or animal to make a journey.
They shall not be travailed forth of their own franchises.
1596, Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Old French travailler, meaning "to trouble, suffer, be worn out," gave Middle English travaillen ("to toil, work"). An altered form in Middle Scots, travailen ("to toil, work, travel"), led to travelen, the Middle English verb meaning "to make a laborious journey," which is the source of the word. Travail is a doublet, and travel largely pushed out the native word fare.
This comes from Middle English travail, from Old French travail, and is a doublet of travail.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The noun travel derives from Middle English travail. en.wiktionary.org
- Its Middle English ancestor derives from Old French travail. en.wiktionary.org
- Travel is a doublet of travail. en.wiktionary.org