There was a time in the twenty-first century, a time prior to the coronavirus pandemic, when Americans travelled freely and frequently. Let’s take a nostalgic look back at the etymologies—word histories—of a few of the words associated with travel.
Travel
In Old English, the word for travel was faran. In the Middle Ages, travel was arduous and about 1300 the word travailen meaning to “to toil, labor” acquired the meaning of “to make a journey” and from this English acquired the verb to travel in the late fourteenth century.
Going deeper into the etymology of travel, the word’s history becomes more interesting. First, both travel and travail have a common ancestor: both come from the Medieval Latin trepālium which described a torture tool made from three stakes. The Latin trepālium is composed from two words: trēs meaning “three” and pālus meaning “stake”. The English word pale as in beyond the pale comes from pālus.
The Latin noun trepālium was used to form the verb trepāliāre meaning “to torture on the trepālium” and the general meaning of “to torture.” The Latin trepāliāre became the Old French travailler, where the reflexive was used to mean “to put oneself to pain or trouble” which eventually took on the meaning of “to work hard.” From this came the noun travail meaning “painful effort, hard work. This noun was adopted into English with the same meaning, but quickly developed the meaning of “journey, or wearisome journey” and the spelling travel.
Journey
Originally the English noun journey described one day’s travel and was adopted into English about 1200 from the Old French journée which meant “a day’s length; a day’s work, a day’s travel.” The Old French journée came from the Vulgar Latin *diurnāta which was from the Latin diurnum meaning “daily allowance or ration. The base of diurnum is dies which means “day”.
The meaning of “a day’s travel” had died out by the mid-sixteenth century leaving the meaning of “travel.”
The word journeyman, by the way, is not connected to the travel meaning of journey but refers to a person who is “a qualified worker”, that is, “one who is qualified to do a day’s work.”
Hotel/Motel
Travelers and tourists need, of course, somewhere to stay during their journeys. The English words hotel, hostel, and hospital all come from the Medieval Latin hospitāle which means “a place where guests are received.” In Old French, the word took two etymological paths, one which resulted in the English word hospital and one in the English word hotel.
In the United States, the development of the automobile as a means of traveling resulted in the creation of motor hotels which became motels.
Baggage
The origins of baggage are found in military jargon. The word entered into English in the mid-fifteenth century with the meaning of “portable equipment of an army; plunder, loot.” Baggage is from the Old French baggage meaning “military equipment” and was formed from the word bague meaning “pack, bundle, sack.”
In 1847, baggage-smasher was the American slang for a railway porter.
The concept of emotional baggage is first attested in 1957.
Luggage
The word luggage is, of course, based on the verb to lug meaning “to pull, to drag” and it is first recorded in English in the 1590s. The verb to lug is from the Swedish lugga meaning “to pull someone’s hair.”
The famous lexicographer Samuel Johnson, in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, defined luggage as "any thing of more weight than value." In the twentieth century, the British definition of luggage was "baggage belonging to passengers."
More Etymologies
Origins of English: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper
Origins of English: Kibitzing about the whole kit and kaboodle
Origins of English: Kinds of meat
Origins of English: Politics and Government
Origins of English: Bread
Origins of English: Coffin and Casket
Origins of English: Lynching
Origins of English: Dunce