traveller
Pluraltravellers, Travellers
US spellingtraveler
- 1A person who is travelling or who often travels, especially to faraway countries.
A seasoned traveller, she had crossed Central Asia by train and on horseback.
Travellers heading abroad this summer are advised to check their passports well before they leave.
UsageThe l doubles before an ending: traveller, travelling, travelled.
Similarglobetrotter, tourist, holidaymaker
Note
Behind it lies Middle English travailour, which could mean a worker as well as someone on the road, and older spellings keep the kinship: Bunyan, in The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), promises a book that 'will make a Travailer of thee', bound for the Holy Land.
- 2A person, especially in the UK, whose home is a caravan, bus or other vehicle rather than a settled address.
A convoy of travellers in old buses and vans set up home on the common for the summer.
As a traveller, she spends the winter parked on a friend's farm and moves on when spring comes.
Similarnomad
Note
A British use for people whose home is on wheels: a caravan, an old bus, a van. Written with a small t, it describes a way of living, not descent, and so differs from the Irish Traveller, a member of an ethnic minority, whose name is properly written with a capital. Everyday writing often blurs the two, so the setting has to show which is meant, and the difference matters: one names a way of life, the other a people.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- An Irish Traveller is a member of an ethnic minority. en.wiktionary.org
- 3Short for Irish Traveller: someone who belongs to Ireland's nomadic ethnic minority.
As a Traveller, she grew up moving between halting sites in the west of Ireland.
A new report found that Travellers in Ireland still face discrimination in housing and employment.
UsageWritten with a capital T: a Traveller, Traveller families, the Traveller community.
Note
After long campaigning by Traveller rights groups, the Irish government recognised Traveller ethnicity in 2017. Irish Travellers are sometimes wrongly called Gypsies, but they are of Irish descent and not related to the Romani people.
Less common meanings
- 4A sales representative who goes round from place to place, selling on a company's behalf.
He spent thirty years as a traveller in ladies' hats, covering the whole of the North of England.
Travellers from the big Manchester firms called at the draper's every few weeks with their sample cases.
UsageOften commercial traveller, or with the firm or goods named: a traveller for a firm, a traveller in hats.
Similarsalesman, representative, rep
- 5In Norway, a member of an ethnic minority with a tradition of nomadic life.
- 6In theatre and television, a rail or track along which a curtain is slid open or shut.
- 7A metal ring fitted loosely on part of a ship's rigging so that it can slide along it freely.
- 8A document that accompanies a part through manufacturing, giving instructions for the work and recording the operations completed.
- 9In electrical wiring, one of the pair of wires that run between the two switches of a two-way lighting circuit (a three-way circuit in American usage).
- 10In bridge, a score sheet that goes with a board of cards from table to table, on which the players write their results.
Used only in American English, spelled traveler: an alcoholic drink in a takeaway cup.
Practice
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Origins
Middle English had this word in several spellings, among them traveler, travelour, travailere and travailour, and it could mean 'worker' as well as 'traveller'. It is travel with the suffix -er. Anglo-Norman and Old French had similar words, such as travailur and travailleor.
From traveller, taken as the name of the group.