travel
Americanverb (used without object)
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travels,
present (3rd person singular)
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traveled,
past participle, past
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travelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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traveling,
present participle
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travelling
present participle (especially British)
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to go from one place to another, as by car, train, plane, or ship; take a trip; journey.
to travel for pleasure.
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to move or go from one place or point to another.
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to proceed or advance in any way.
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to go from place to place as a representative of a business firm.
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to associate or consort.
He travels in a wealthy crowd.
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Informal. to move with speed.
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to pass, or be transmitted, as light or sound.
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Basketball. (of a player in possession of the ball) to take more than two steps without dribbling or passing the ball.
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to move in a fixed course, as a piece of mechanism.
verb (used with object)
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travels,
present (3rd person singular)
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traveled,
past participle, past
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travelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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traveling,
present participle
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travelling
present participle (especially British)
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to travel, journey, or pass through or over, as a country or road.
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to journey or traverse (a specified distance).
We traveled a hundred miles.
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to cause to journey; ship.
to travel logs downriver.
noun
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the act of traveling; journeying, especially to distant places.
to travel to other planets.
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travels,
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to set out on one's travels.
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journeys as the subject of a written account or literary work.
a book of travels.
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such an account or work.
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the coming and going of persons or conveyances along a way of passage; traffic.
an increase in travel on state roads.
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Basketball. an instance of traveling with the ball.
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Machinery.
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the complete movement of a moving part, especially a reciprocating part, in one direction, or the distance traversed; stroke.
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length of stroke.
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movement or passage in general.
to reduce the travel of food from kitchen to table.
adjective
verb
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to go, move, or journey from one place to another
he travels to improve his mind
she travelled across France
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(tr) to go, move, or journey through or across (an area, region, etc)
he travelled the country
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to go, move, or cover a specified or unspecified distance
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to go from place to place as a salesman
to travel in textiles
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(esp of perishable goods) to withstand a journey
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(of light, sound, etc) to be transmitted or move
the sound travelled for miles
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to progress or advance
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basketball to take an excessive number of steps while holding the ball
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(of part of a mechanism) to move in a fixed predetermined path
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informal to move rapidly
that car certainly travels
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informal (often foll by with) to be in the company (of); associate
noun
-
-
the act of travelling
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( as modifier )
a travel brochure
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(usually plural) a tour or journey
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the distance moved by a mechanical part, such as the stroke of a piston
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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
Derived Forms
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pretravelnoun
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outtravelverb (used with object)
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nontravelingadjective
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nontravellingadjective
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travelableadjective
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untravelingadjective
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untravellingadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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travelsimple
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travelssimple
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have traveledperfect
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have travelledperfect
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has traveledperfect
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has travelledperfect
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am travelingprogressive
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am travellingprogressive
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are travelingprogressive
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are travellingprogressive
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is travelingprogressive
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is travellingprogressive
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have been travelingperfect progressive
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have been travellingperfect progressive
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has been travelingperfect progressive
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has been travellingperfect progressive
Past
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traveledsimple
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travelledsimple
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had traveledperfect
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had travelledperfect
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was travelingprogressive
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was travellingprogressive
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were travelingprogressive
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were travellingprogressive
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had been travelingperfect progressive
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had been travellingperfect progressive
Future
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
Explanation
To travel is the act of going from one place to another, usually a considerable distance. Your daily commute in the morning doesn't generally count as travel. Your trip to Timbuktu? That counts. Travel can also be used as a noun — as in your travels to Timbuktu. Or perhaps you prefer time travel or space travel. Objects that are especially adapted for use when you travel are often modified by the word travel; for example, a "travel-bag," "travel- games," or a "travel iron." And if something is particularly popular in another country or culture from its place of origin, say a cheese, a wine, or a type of music, it's said to "travel well."
Vocabulary lists containing travel
"Mysteries of the Ancient Past"
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"Escaping to Freedom" and "Follow the Drinking Gourd"
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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.
See Examples For:
"The stars in a stellar stream all travel along nearly the same orbit, and that orbit is shaped by the galaxy's gravity," said Northwestern's Tjitske Starkenburg, who coauthored the study.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 24, 2026
Charlotte Davies, career expert at LinkedIn, says while there is still progress to be made "the direction of travel is encouraging".
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
From that game on, TV games featuring high school football multiplied and schools began to travel around the country for marquee matchups.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2026
Some Russians who have the money to travel have already scoped out destinations for the next few months where they can wait out a potential mobilization.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
“Oh yes, they were the masters of that trade! They’d travel the river and the creeks, set up camp on sandbanks from village to village, harvest all the clams they could find, and move on.”
From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo
“It Ends,” the bold and breathtaking feature debut from writer-director Alexander Ullom, travels a similar trajectory, both in the context of the film itself and its intrepid journey to the big screen.
From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2026
Mario Alroy, 36, from India, has been an account manager at AT&S for four years and travels to work daily from Graz, the nearest big city.
From Barron's ● Aug. 23, 2026
Their travels will bring them as far as a dude ranch in Texas and the Grand Canyon.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
Astronomers may have found some of the strongest evidence yet for one of quantum mechanics' strangest predictions: even apparently empty space can influence the way light travels.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 18, 2026
“As Agatha Swanburne often said, ‘Mind your business, for if you don’t, who will?’” she replied briskly, when the girls dared to ask about her travels.
From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood
The flight marked the first time astronauts had traveled aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, which is designed to carry crews on missions beyond low Earth orbit.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 24, 2026
Another couple, wearing designer sunglasses, told me that they had traveled here all the way from Italy to try Cane’s.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2026
She recently traveled to the Texas Panhandle, a rural part of the state, and heard from frustrated locals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
The road is traveled by hundreds of thousands of cars annually.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
And with that thought a bad feeling came over me that started in my stomach and traveled out my legs and arms and ended up in my toes, my fingers, and even my tongue.
From "Ida B" by Katherine Hannigan
The last surviving subject of King Edward VII, as a teenager she travelled to India in 1927 and began working as an au pair to a military family there.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Police allege he travelled to Russia for the training in October 2024 before returning to Australia, where he "maintained contact" with individuals he believed were linked to Moscow's intelligence services.
From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026
He travelled in 2025 to Ukraine, where he enlisted in the country's armed forces and "gained access to information relating to their military personnel, units and locations", police allege.
From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026
Hunt travelled to Switzerland on the back of winning four gold medals at the European Championships in Birmingham last week.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
“No, not about the letters. As far as I can remember, his words were: ‘We travelled about.
From "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie
For about a decade, the Sacramento museum’s trustees have discussed creating a traveling exhibition on mass deportations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026
There were several themes in your responses, but the overarching advice was this: Keep traveling!
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
André said he was stopped in April 2021 while also traveling back to Los Angeles after a layover in Atlanta, according to the complaint.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
That would leave you with $1 million, but you’d be managing two households and traveling between them.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026
“I think they were changed by traveling through time. I think they—and all the other babies—came from the future.”
From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Its foreign travel advice for Ukraine warns travelling to Ukraine to fight or to assist others engaged in the war may amount to offences under UK legislation.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2026
Officers from Kent Police arrested the man on Sunday while he was travelling to France by train.
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
Some of the new enthusiasm is driven by the phenomenon of "set-jetting" -- people travelling to a destination after seeing it in a movie or TV series.
From Barron's ● Aug. 22, 2026
Maradona spent most of that year in Dubai before travelling to Argentina to see his father, Diego Salustiano Maradona, who died in June 2015.
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
If the Earth moves, why isn’t there a constant gale of wind blowing past, like the wind in your hair that rushes past if you are in an open-topped car travelling on a motorway?
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
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.
