Journey is actually exhausting work

Welcome to a shorter-than-usual RobWords Newsletter, as I’m Edinburgh-bound.

It’s exhausting work.

I’ll admit that this selection wasn’t random. I’m sipping a pint of pilsner in departures at Berlin airport with an indication in entrance of me that claims “TRAVEL VALUE: DUTY FREE”. This jogged my memory that journey has taken its personal etymological journey.

Occasionally, in English, we’ve taken two spellings of the identical phrase and apportioned totally different meanings to every of them. One instance of such a pairing is grammar and glamour, which we mentioned a couple of weeks in the past (each are takes on gramaire). Another is journey and travail.

If you’ve ever tried to study French, you’ll maybe already know that travailler means “to work” and le travail is “the work”. The English phrase travail represents a straight-up borrowing of this. When we speak of our travails, we converse of our efforts.

Back within the late medieval interval, crossing continents wasn’t so simple as hopping on an Easyjet – it was exhausting work. Hence, to journey far was to travail. Here’s Shakespeare utilizing it to imply exactly that.

Travail was spelt a wide range of methods, together with travaile, travayle, and journey. Over time, the latter grew to become the popular kind for discussing the exertions of transferring from A to B. Meanwhile, travail was retained to explain different types of toil.

BONUS TRAVEL ETYMOLOGY

Our phrase journey is from the French journée, which merely means “day”. Originally a journey was how far you would go in a day.

In the Middle Ages it was usually assumed you would stroll 20 miles between waking up and going to mattress, so a 100-mile journey would have been 5 “journeys”.

On Thursday I start my 11-night run at this 12 months’s EDINBURGH FRINGE.

If you’re on the town, come see me on the Assembly George Square Studios (Studio 3). If you’re not in Edinburgh however know somebody who’s, ship them my method for an hour of wordy nerdy enjoyable.

I’ll be on at 8.10pm each evening from from sixth to sixteenth August.

TICKETS HERE

Take a pinch of witchcraft, add a contact of sorcery, and “Hey presto!” you will have a wordy nerdy episode about magical phrases.

🧙 Can solely girls be witches?
🔒 What did a warlock initially do?
🪄 What language is ‘Alakazam’?

These questions answered – and plenty of extra – in one other enchanting version of Words Unravelled. Watch or hear beneath.

LISTEN HERE

Right – my flight is boarding. I’ll be again with a full publication subsequent week. In the meantime, don’t travail too exhausting.