JOURNEYMAN

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single day.

A journeyman has nothing to do with travel, as the word journey would imply. But then again, originally the word journey had no exclusive connection with travel.

We borrowed journey from an Old French word with various meanings of “a day” or “things accomplished in a day” (things like work performed, travels recorded, and so on). In English, an early and now-obsolete meaning of jumeis or ioumeye or many other spellings was “day,” with the meaning of travel following

shortly because of the word’s connection with its Old French source.

But at first, a journeyman was a day-worker, thus the word’s current meaning of one skilled, but only to a point. And so, I shall adjourn this discussion (put off to another day), so that you may write this factoid down in your daily record. No, not your blog. Your journal.