travel
Verbtravels
Noun pluraltravels (some meanings)
Often confused with trip and journey
Formstravels
Pluraltravels (some meanings)
- 1To go from one place to another, or all around a place, especially on a trip for fun or work.
Like going on a trip to a new town and coming home again.
We travel to the coast every summer.
She loves traveling to new countries on her own.
UsageSay travel to a place or travel by train.
Similarrange
Note
- 2
- 3To move or pass from one place to another.
Like a smell moving from the kitchen to fill the whole house.
Sound travels faster in water than in air.
Light can travel through empty space.
UsageOften travels fast: news travels fast.
- 4A written or spoken story about the trips a person has made.
Like a diary that tells where someone went and what they saw along the way.
Have you read his travels? The chapter on Peru is great.
Every night she read a chapter of her uncle's travels aloud.
UsageSay his travels or her travels.
Similartravelogue
Note
Less common meanings
- 5The movement of people or vehicles along a road or through a place.
Travel on the bridge slows to a crawl at rush hour.
Heavy travel through the pass damages the road each winter.
Similartraffic
- 6In basketball, to move your feet illegally while holding the ball without bouncing it.
The referee blew the whistle because she traveled.
You will travel if you take too many steps.
Note
- 7
- 8To work very hard, or to struggle 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 SacrificeHere, travel means work very hard and struggle.Man 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 10Here, travel means work hard with great effort.Note
- 9The hard work 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 physickHere, travel means the hard work and pain of giving birth.Note
- 10To make someone or something go on 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
It comes from an old English word meaning to make a hard journey. This came from a French word for trouble or suffering.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Travel comes from an earlier English word meaning to make a hard journey; lowercase 'old' is understood descriptively, not as the language name Old English. en.wiktionary.org
- The French ancestor meant to trouble or suffer. en.wiktionary.org
This form comes through Middle English and Old French, and is a doublet of the word travail.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Travel comes through Middle English. en.wiktionary.org
- Travel comes through Old French. en.wiktionary.org
- Travel is a doublet of travail. en.wiktionary.org