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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Did you know... (VII)

... the origin of the word “travel”?

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...

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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:22 PM, February 25, 2009

    Incidentally, the word for travel in Hindi is pronounced "suffer". ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  2. Georg7:33 AM, February 26, 2009

    Hello Bee,
    so 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

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:50 PM, February 26, 2009

    That is what ipods are for; ipod and sleep, no coffee.

    mike casidy

    ReplyDelete

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