Whether you prefer a “cruise” or a “safari,” or measure your “journey” in “knots” or “milestones,” this chapter offers a few words to guide you on your “adventure” of discovering the roots of travel words.

Adventure

This noun has come to mean action a bit more exciting than its root words suggest. “Adventure” is a combination of the Latin preposition ad, meaning “to,” and the Latin verb venire, meaning “to come.” In English, an adventure usually is an experience that involves daring and danger.

Caravan

A caravan is a group of travelers or vehicles journeying together. The word has changed little from the definition of its root word, the Persian noun karwan, which means “a company of individuals traveling together for safety.”

Carry-all

A carry-all is a convenient bag that holds whatever you need for a short trip. Its origin is the French noun carriole, meaning “a light, covered, one-horse carriage that seats several people.”

Cruise

Following the Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Dutch, English, Portuguese, and Spanish became great trade rivals, each importing and exporting goods around the world. Some captains and sailors became pirates because they found it more profitable to seize another ship’s cargo than to transport their own. Pirate ships had no set schedule or course. Rather they crossed and crisscrossed the oceans, seeking victims. The Dutch called this type of sailing kruisen, from their word kruis, meaning “cross.” Kruis, in turn, traces its roots to the Latin noun crux, which also means “cross.” In the 17th century, the English borrowed the term, adapted it to “cruise,” and used it to refer to warships crossing the waters in search of the enemy. In time, speakers of English used it to refer to pleasure boats crossing the water, but with no purpose or timetable. Today, “cruise” refers to any type of pleasure trip on a boat.

Journey/Journal

“Journey” originally referred to the distance a person covered in a day’s march, while “journal” referred to the events that occurred in one day. Both trace their roots to the Latin adjective diurnum, meaning “daily.”

Homer’s Odyssey recounts the long journey home of the Greek hero Odysseus. This work is one of the world’s best and most famous examples of epic poetry.

Knot

A knot measures a ship’s speed at sea, or how many nautical miles the ship travels in an hour. For centuries, sailors measured a ship’s speed using a log line, a rope divided by knots every 50 feet. Sailors tied a log to the end of the rope, threw it overboard, and then counted the number of knots that moved past a checkpoint in half a minute. If 10 knots went by, they were moving at a speed of 10 knots, or roughly 10 nautical miles per hour. One nautical mile is 796 feet longer than a land-measured mile, which is 5,280 feet.

Map

During the Middle Ages, European mapmakers drew their charts on cloth because it was considered a durable material. Since Latin was the most widely used language at the time in Europe, it was common to use the Latin word mappa, meaning “cloth,” for the material the cartographers used. Gradually, mappa came to refer specifically to geographical drawings. English later shortened it to “map.”

The Greeks credited the philosopher Anaximander of Miletus as the first mapmaker.

Milestone

In the early days of the Roman Empire, a large stone was positioned in the Forum at Rome. Along the roads leading out of Rome were additional markers. Each represented a distance of 1,000 paces. (One pace equals approximately five feet. So 1,000 paces would be the equivalent of one mile.) Chiseled on each stone was the distance from Rome to the site of the stone. Such a stone was called a milliarium, from the Latin term mille, meaning “thousand.” Our mile is a derivative of mille.

Forums were marketing and meeting places in ancient Roman towns. In ancient Rome, the Forum was centrally located in the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. It was here that, in 20 b.c., the Roman emperor Augustus set up a Golden Milestone, a marble column with gilt-bronze plates. See also palace.

Route

This often-used word, which refers to a road, highway, or regularly traveled path, has an interesting history. The Romans referred to a pathway that had been cleared for travel as a via rupta, meaning “a road having been broken.” The French adapted the Latin participle ruptus (“having been broken”) to route. The English adopted the French word and its meaning with no changes. Other English words that trace their origins to rupta are: routine (“a behavior pattern that is followed regularly”), rote (“a mechanical way of doing the same thing repeatedly”), and rout (“a disorderly retreat, usually by military forces”).

Safari

Originally “safari” was used to describe a great hunting expedition, especially into the jungles of Africa. The word is used today to refer to any travel expedition that involves adventure. This change brings “safari” closer to its origin, the Arabic word safara, meaning “travel.”

Africa is the world’s second-largest continent and is split in half by the world’s largest desert—the Sahara. The Sahara has an area of approximately 3.5 million square miles and covers nearly one third of Africa’s total land area.

Sampan

A combination of the Chinese word sam, meaning “three,” and pan, meaning “plank,” a sampan is a small boat used in China and Japan that is rowed with an oar in the stern. Some sampans have a sail and a small cabin made of mats.

Starboard

Centuries ago, sailors steered their boats by working a large oar on the right side of the vessel. To name this side of a ship, the early English used steorbord, (later “starboard”) meaning “steer side.” When loading or unloading supplies, sailors naturally used the left side of the vessel, where there was no oar to interfere with their work. The English called the left side the ladebord (later larboard) or “loading side.” Because the names were so similar, accidents did happen when someone mistook larboard for starboard. To simplify matters, “port” was substituted for larboard since the left side of a boat was the one closest to the dock or port. Today, “starboard” refers to the right side and “port” refers to the left side of any boat. See also port.

Travel/Travail

Would you ever guess that “travel” and “travail” both trace their roots to the Latin words tres and palus, meaning “three” and “stick”? In the Middle Ages, the French used an instrument to torture people that was composed of three pieces of wood. To name this device, the French borrowed the two Latin words and formed trepalium. As the years passed, the French modified trepalium to travailler and used it as a verb meaning “to work hard.” English borrowed travailler, changed the spelling to “travail” but left the meaning the same. “Travail” also came to mean “going from one place to another.” Journeys at this time were quite difficult—roads were not paved and the threat of an attack by bandits or wild beasts was always a possibility. Gradually, two English words developed: “travail,” meaning “hard work,” and “travel,” meaning “a journey.”

Voyage

The Latin term for road or passage is via. To designate the provisions one needed for a journey of some distance, the Romans used via as a base and formed viaticum. The Italians borrowed the term, but changed both the spelling and the meaning. The Italian viaggio means “the trip” rather than “the necessities for the trip.” The English language later adapted viaggio to “voyage.”