travel

For many of us travel is usually for pleasure, so that we are unlikely to associate travel with hard labor or torture. However, the ultimate source of travel is a spoken Latin verb trepaliare, “to torture,” derived from trepalium, a name for an instrument of torture. Trepaliare developed into medieval French travailler, which meant “to torture or torment,” as well as “to suffer or labor.” Middle English borrowed the French verb as travailen with the same sense. But the difficulties of getting from place to place in the Middle Ages, when any journey was an exhausting effort, led medieval speakers of English to apply travailen to making a trip. We still use the word, though travel is now much easier.