travel
Definitions
General English
Cars & Driving
- noun the distance moved by a mechanical part when performing an operation; e.g. the stroke of a piston
Commerce
- noun the moving of people from one place to another or from one country to another
- verb to move from one place to another or from one country to another
- verb to go from one place to another, showing a company’s goods to buyers and taking orders from them
Construction
- The vertical distance between the bottom landing of an elevator or escalator and the top landing. See also rise.
Media Studies
Publishing
- verb to go from one place to another, especially to show a company’s goods to buyers and take orders from them
Travel
- adjective specially made for use when travelling
Origin & History of “travel”
Travel and travail (13th c.) are doublets – that is to say, they have a common ancestor, but have split into separate words. their ultimate source is medieval Latin trepālium, a term for an instrument of torture made of three sharp stakes. This was a compound noun formed from Latin trēs ‘three’ and pālus ‘stake’ (source of English pale). From it was formed a verb *trepāliāre ‘torture on the trepālium’, hence generally ‘torture’. This passed into Old French as travailler, where its reflexive use ‘put oneself to pain or trouble’ evolved to ‘work hard’. Its noun derivative travail ‘painful effort, hard work’ was borrowed by English as travail, and this quickly developed a new sense, ‘journey’ (presumably from the notion of a ‘wearisome journey’), which came to be distinguished by the spelling travel.
