travel
Americanverb (used without object)
-
to go from one place to another, as by car, train, plane, or ship; take a trip; journey.
to travel for pleasure.
-
to move or go from one place or point to another.
-
to proceed or advance in any way.
-
to go from place to place as a representative of a business firm.
-
to associate or consort.
He travels in a wealthy crowd.
-
Informal. to move with speed.
-
to pass, or be transmitted, as light or sound.
-
Basketball. (of a player in possession of the ball) to take more than two steps without dribbling or passing the ball.
-
to move in a fixed course, as a piece of mechanism.
verb (used with object)
-
to travel, journey, or pass through or over, as a country or road.
-
to journey or traverse (a specified distance).
We traveled a hundred miles.
-
to cause to journey; ship.
to travel logs downriver.
noun
-
the act of traveling; journeying, especially to distant places.
to travel to other planets.
-
travels,
-
to set out on one's travels.
-
journeys as the subject of a written account or literary work.
a book of travels.
-
such an account or work.
-
-
the coming and going of persons or conveyances along a way of passage; traffic.
an increase in travel on state roads.
-
Basketball. an instance of traveling with the ball.
-
Machinery.
-
the complete movement of a moving part, especially a reciprocating part, in one direction, or the distance traversed; stroke.
-
length of stroke.
-
-
movement or passage in general.
to reduce the travel of food from kitchen to table.
adjective
verb
-
to go, move, or journey from one place to another
he travels to improve his mind
she travelled across France
-
(tr) to go, move, or journey through or across (an area, region, etc)
he travelled the country
-
to go, move, or cover a specified or unspecified distance
-
to go from place to place as a salesman
to travel in textiles
-
(esp of perishable goods) to withstand a journey
-
(of light, sound, etc) to be transmitted or move
the sound travelled for miles
-
to progress or advance
-
basketball to take an excessive number of steps while holding the ball
-
(of part of a mechanism) to move in a fixed predetermined path
-
informal to move rapidly
that car certainly travels
-
informal (often foll by with) to be in the company (of); associate
noun
-
-
the act of travelling
-
( as modifier )
a travel brochure
-
-
(usually plural) a tour or journey
-
the distance moved by a mechanical part, such as the stroke of a piston
-
movement or passage
Spelling
The word travel has come to exemplify a common spelling quandary: to double or not to double the final consonant of a verb before adding the ending that forms the past tense ( –ed ) or the ending that forms the present-participle ( –ing. ) We see it done both ways—sometimes with the same word ( travel, traveled, traveling; travel, travelled, travelling ). As readers, we accept these variations without even thinking about them. But as writers, we need to know just when we should double that final consonant and when we should not. Because American practice differs slightly from British practice, there is no one answer. But there are well-established conventions. In American writing, when you have a one-syllable verb that ends with a single vowel followed by a single consonant, and you want to add a regular inflectional ending that begins with a vowel, you double that final consonant before adding -ed or -ing : stop, stopped, stopping; flag, flagged, flagging. This principle also holds for verbs of more than one syllable if the final syllable is stressed: permit, permitted, permitting; refer, referred, referring. If that syllable is not stressed, there is no doubling of the final consonant: gallop, galloped, galloping; travel, traveled, traveling. British spelling conventions are similar. They deviate from American practices only when the verb ends with a single vowel followed by an l . In that case, no matter the stress pattern, the final l gets doubled. Thus British writing has repel, repelled, repelling (as would American writing, since the final syllable is stressed). But it also has travel, travelled, travelling and cancel, cancelled, cancelling, since in the context of British writing the verb’s final l, not its stress pattern, is the determining factor. Verbs ending in other consonants have the same doubling patterns that they would have in American writing. An outlier on both sides of the Atlantic is the small group of verbs ending in -ic and one lonely -ac verb. They require an added k before inflectional endings in order to retain the appropriate “hard” sound of the letter c : panic, panicked, panicking; frolic, frolicked, frolicking; shellac, shellacked, shellacking. Canadians, of course, are free to use either British or American spellings.
Other Word Forms
- nontraveling adjective
- nontravelling adjective
- outtravel verb (used with object)
- pretravel noun
- travelable adjective
- untraveling adjective
- untravelling adjective
Etymology
Origin of travel
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English (Northern and Scots), originally the same word as travail (by semantic change from “to toil, labor,” then “to make a laborious journey,” then “to journey,” a change that did not occur in French and other Romance languages); spelling travel is due to an accent shift in the 14th century
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
My wife is a survivor, and I travel with her.
From Los Angeles Times
Despite restrictions on foreign students that include a full or partial travel ban on 39 nations and increased vetting, the overall UC international student enrollment remained relatively stable.
From Los Angeles Times
Storm Goretti is set to bring heavy snowfall and strong winds across the UK later on Thursday, which could cause travel disruption and damage properties.
From BBC
Electric charge flows through wires, heat spreads through metal, and water travels through pipes.
From Science Daily
The snow and icy conditions have also caused widespread travel chaos across Europe, with thousands of people stranded at airports in Paris and Amsterdam as flights were cancelled.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
