voyage
Pluralvoyages
Verbvoyages, voyaging, voyaged
Pluralvoyages
Formsvoyages, voyaging, voyaged
- 1A long journey, especially one made by ship.
The liner's maiden voyage ended in disaster when it struck an iceberg.
The probe's voyage to the outer planets lasted more than a decade.
Similarjourney, trip, crossing, passage, expedition
Note
English first wrote it viage; the modern spelling follows Modern French voyage, and the Latin source, viaticum, survives separately in English as its doublet. The word lends itself to figures: Shakespeare's Brutus speaks of all the voyage of their life bound in shallows, and John Fletcher's The Wild-Goose Chase pairs a sea voyage with a blustering tempest as things to love.
- 2To make a long journey.
Her grandparents voyaged from Naples to New York with two suitcases and a baby.
Explorers who voyage to the polar regions must plan for months of darkness.
Note
Poets have used the verb for journeys of the mind and soul: Wordsworth's Prelude (1850) has a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, and Whitman's Passage to India asks the soul whether it voyages on voyages like those. In plainer prose it usually takes to, from or across, naming where the long journey starts or ends.
- 3A book or other written narrative describing a journey or a traveler's experiences.
The bookseller had a first edition of the explorer's voyage, bound in three volumes.
Collections of printed voyages taught European readers what they knew of distant coasts.
Note
Late seventeenth-century readers found voyages on the shelf beside relations and embassies, other kinds of report from abroad, and the second voyage of Father Tachard meant his book. Today the use survives mainly in old titles; a new book of the kind is a travel account.
Less common meaning
- 4Traveling, either on a particular occasion or as a regular activity.
Note
Here the word works like travel itself, with no a or the: in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, nations know one another by voyage into foreign parts or by strangers who come to them. The use is obsolete, so write travel for the activity and keep voyage for a single long journey.
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Origin
From Middle English viage, borrowed from Anglo-Norman viage and Old French voiage, from Latin viaticum; the modern spelling is due to the influence of Modern French voyage. It is a doublet of viaticum.