traversal

American  

[truh-vur-suhl] / trəˈvɜr səl /

noun

1. the act or process of passing across, over, or through.

   A problem with the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it began its traversal of the rings of Saturn was eventually linked to high-speed collisions with micrometeoroids.

2. Computers. the act or process of systematically visiting all nodes of a tree or other linked data structure, usually for the purposes of collecting or transforming data at the nodes.

   Issues fixed in this release include a vulnerability in directory traversal that could give an attacker the ability to access files that should be restricted.

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Etymology

Origin of traversal

travers(e) ( def. ) + -al ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

Headlined by conductor Marco Armiliato, soprano Lisette Oropesa as the heroine Elvira and tenor Lawrence Brownlee as her beloved Arturo, this was a musically idiomatic and expressive traversal.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 2, 2026

“You’re talking about a snake robot that can do surface traversal on ice, go through holes and swim underwater — one robot that can conquer all three worlds,” Rohan Thakker, a robotics technologist at JPL.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 24, 2023

But the video featured quite a bit of environmental traversal as well — Gollum spent a lot of time scaling walls and making great leaps to avoid hazards.

From The Verge • May 24, 2022

If Mr. Levit’s traversal, paid for using the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award he received in 2018, was brisk, it was only for small stretches.

From New York Times • May 31, 2020

A hop is a traversal across a gateway.

From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet by Krol, Ed