It goes back to the Old French word travail “suffering or painful effort, trouble” (12c.), from travailler “to toil, labor,” originally “to trouble, torture,” from Vulgar Latin tripaliare “to torture,” from tripalium (in Literary Latin trepalium) “instrument of torture.”
Source: The Online Etymology Dictionary
Yep.
Next time you fly from the East- to the Westcoast, suffering from cheap airline coffee and dull movies, try to imagine you'd have taken the trip 200 years ago...
See also: Did you know...
Incidentally, the word for travel in Hindi is pronounced "suffer". ^_^
ReplyDeleteHello Bee,
ReplyDeleteso that means that the English and
French needed to be tortured to get
them to work? :=)
BTW. look for the background of German "Reise", Reisige, Reisläufer.
Regards
Georg
That is what ipods are for; ipod and sleep, no coffee.
ReplyDeletemike casidy