Meaning of travel in English

travel

verb

/ˈtræv.əl/ us

/ˈtræv.əl/

-ll- or US usually -l-

travel verb (MAKE JOURNEY)

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A1 [ I or T ]

to make a journey, usually over a long distance:

Between school and university, she spent a year travelling, mostly in Africa and Asia.

travel to something by something I travel to work by train.

He travelled over 1,000 miles to be at the wedding.

travel the world As a young man he had travelled (= been to many parts of) the world.

[ I ]

If something travels well/badly, it does/does not stay in good condition if it is moved long distances:

Some wines don't travel well.

travel light

to make a journey without taking a lot of heavy things with you:

I always try to travel light.

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I like to travel but, then again, I'm very fond of my home.
It's often quicker to travel across country and avoid the major roads altogether.
Passengers without proper documentation will not be allowed to travel.
The elderly travel free on public transport.
We like to travel in the autumn when there are fewer tourists.
The tragedy is that cultures don't always travel well, and few immigrant groups can sustain their culture over the long term.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Travelling

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Various qualities of food

travel verb (MOVE)

B1 [ I ]

to move or go from one place to another:

Supersonic planes can travel faster than the speed of sound.

With wooden-bat baseball, the ball doesn't travel as far as it does with aluminium bats.

Signals at this wavelength can travel easily through buildings.

really travel mainly UK informal

to move very fast:

That bike can really travel!

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The objects travel in elliptical orbits.
In 1947, a pilot flying over the Cascades saw nine metallic flying objects travelling at an estimated 1,200 miles per hour.
The elevator travelled smoothly upward.
White light separates out into its component wavelengths when travelling through a prism.
As the material travels through the winding machine, excess liquid is squeezed out by rollers.
Lead dust travels easily from hands to mouth and can't be seen.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

General words for movement

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travel verb (BREAK RULE)

[ I ]

in basketball, to move three or more steps with the ball without dribbling it (= hitting it against the floor repeatedly), which is against the rules:

The coach argued to the referee that the player travelled before he took the shot.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Basketball, netball & volleyball

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Idiom

have something, will travel

travel

noun

/ˈtræv.əl/ us

/ˈtræv.əl/

travel noun (ACTIVITY)

B1 [ U ]

the activity of travelling:

air/space travel

business travel

We share a love of literature, food and travel.

travel news I heard on the travel news that there'd been an accident.

travels C1 [ plural ]

journeys:

travels in/around a record of her travels in/around the Far East

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They offer a 10 percent discount on rail travel for students.
The price includes travel and accommodation but meals are extra.
His work provided him with the opportunity for a lot of foreign travel.
The popular myth is that air travel is more dangerous than travel by car or bus.
Passes are available for one month's unlimited travel within Europe.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Journeys

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travel noun (MOVEMENT OF OBJECT)

[ U ]

the distance, speed, or direction that an object moves or is able to move:

The calendar is based on the orbital travel of Earth around the Sun.

direction of travel The arrows show the ball's direction of travel.

The bicycle's fork has a total travel of about 4 inches.

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It can be difficult to predict the travel of smoke from smouldering fires.
The travel of the bullets and blood spatter showed that he was lying on the ground on his side when he was shot.
This seemed to prove that light has a finite speed of travel.
Striking the ball when the clubhead is already past the lowest point of its travel gives a slight overspin.
The actuator then rotates its output shaft to the extremes of its travel.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

General words for movement

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travel

adjective [ before noun ]

/ˈtræv.əl/ us

/ˈtræv.əl/

describing a sport that is played by organized teams of young people, often involving the best players who travel to play in different parts of the country:

Hauptman played travel soccer when he was younger.

Jake gave up playing travel baseball so he could play in his hometown with his friends.

They're looking for coaches for their girls travel team.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Competing in sport

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(Definition of travel from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

travel | American Dictionary

travel

verb [ I/T ]

/ˈtræv·əl/

-l- | -ll-

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to go from one place to another on a trip, usually over a long distance:

[ I ] The train was traveling (at) about 100 miles an hour.

[ T ] I travel long distances as part of my job, so on vacations I like to stay close to home.

[ I ] infml We were doing 70 miles an hour, so the guy who whizzed past us must have really been traveling (= going very fast).

traveler

noun [ C ] (also traveller) us

/ˈtræv·ə·lər/

Travelers in a hurry like these self-service machines.

Idiom

travel light

travel

noun

/ˈtræv·əl/

the activity of traveling, usually over a long distance:

[ U ] A lot of my travel is business related.

[ pl ] I’ve met some pretty interesting people in my travels (= trips).

(Definition of travel from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

travel | Business English

travel

verb [ I or T ]

/ˈtrævəl/ us

UK -ll- | US -l-

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to go from one place to another, especially over a long distance, in a plane, train, car, etc.:

The ability to travel easily in and out of the region is a significant factor for professionals doing business here.

Due to the increasing costs of travelling abroad, more Americans are choosing to stay closer to home during their vacation.

He travels around 200,000 miles a year on business.

A delegation of officials will be traveling to New Orleans to lobby for the cash.

travel around/across/through somewhere Riding a bike is often the most efficient way to travel around big cities

travel by air/train/car How long does it take to travel by train from Glasgow to London?

travel the world/the country/the state She has travelled the world in her work as foreign correspondent.

to move at a particular speed or over a particular distance:

An electric motor powers the car at all speeds, and it can travel 40 miles on batteries alone.

travel at 40mph/80kph, etc. A train travelling at 30 mph takes about a mile to bring to a stop.

travel

noun [ U ]

/ˈtrævəl/ us

the activity of going from one place to another, especially over a long distance, in a plane, train, car, etc.,:

A survey revealed that federal employees were routinely abusing rules regarding business-class travel.

He was reimbursed for the cost of travel between his home and workplace.

The travel and tourism industry employs more than 187,000 people in North Carolina.

Make copies of important travel documents like your passport and itinerary.

air/rail/space travel

overseas/international/foreign travel

business/leisure/holiday travel

free/cheap travel

travel company/firm/industry

travel arrangements/plans

travel expenses/costs

travel on/in sth Purchase of a smart card entitles you to three days' unlimited travel on the Metro, buses, and trams.

travel to/from/between somewhere The Chairman has a constant round of meetings, involving travel to Western Europe and throughout the UK.

(Definition of travel from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of travel

travel

Symmetries in modulated traveling waves in combustion: jumping ponies on a merry-go-round.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

As a result, we chose to include only travelling latent individuals who are expected to enter the prodromal period at their destination.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

A detonation wave has traveled to the right and it is in the process of collapsing the liner, which is shown in the figure.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Along with the harsh conditions in the southern and western circuits, the distance justices traveled in those circuits could itself be grueling.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Females, by contrast, stayed away from the roost throughout the night, irrespective of the foraging distance they travelled.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Transportation costs included the expenses incurred by traveling to and from the healthcare delivery site.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

When travelling by kayak, all wildlife was recorded while transiting between known departure and arrival locations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The oscillator beam passes an optical isolation, which prevents imperfectly polarized back traveling parts of the beam from entering the oscillator.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Accordingly, such travelling wave-forms as produce minimal angular recoil are desirable.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Many famous hard optimization problems, such as the travelling salesman problem or the protein folding problem, are global optimization problems.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If a photon enters such a cell and there is no surface to be found on its present trajectory, then it simply travels forever.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In the case of prisons and corruption the discourses have travelled as part of complex processes of diffusion.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Many patients spend their last days traveling to distant hospitals or getting through the long waiting lists.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Among adults aged 20 -40 years, travelling abroad was associated with illness.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Most of these were young women travelling abroad to experience something new before attending university or settling down in their own country.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of travel

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with travel

travel

These are words often used in combination with travel.

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air travel

This concern may be somewhat counterbalanced by the significant underestimation of daily passenger air travel.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

automobile travel

He combined a passion for automobile travel and photography into a postcard business that proved popular with motoring tourists of the 1930s and 1940s.

From

Wikipedia

This example is from Wikipedia and may be reused under a CC BY-SA license.

constant travel

There are many compensations even for this constant travel.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

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What is the pronunciation of travel?