Origins
The word 'travel' entered Middle English as 'travaillen' in the fourteenth century, borrowed from Old French 'travailler' (to toil, to labor, to suffer).βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ The Old French word derives from Vulgar Latin *tripaliΔre (to torture), from Late Latin 'tripalium' β a compound of Latin 'trΔs' (three) and 'pΔlus' (stake), denoting an instrument of torture consisting of three stakes to which a person was bound. The progression from 'to torture' to 'to toil' to 'to journey' is one of the most frequently cited examples of semantic drift in the history of English.
The semantic chain is not difficult to reconstruct. In Late Latin, *tripaliΔre meant to inflict pain with the tripalium. In Vulgar Latin and early Old French, the meaning broadened to any kind of painful exertion or forced labor. By the twelfth century, Old French 'travailler' meant to work hard, to toil, to suffer β and since premodern travel involved all of those things, the word naturally extended to the act of making a difficult journey. Roads were bad, bandits were common, inns were few, and weather was merciless. To travel was genuinely to suffer.
English performed a remarkable lexical split. The single Old French word 'travailler' was borrowed twice, with each borrowing capturing a different slice of the original meaning. 'Travail' (first attested c. 1250) retained the sense of painful labor, suffering, and the agony of childbirth. 'Travel' (first attested c. 1375) specialized in the sense of making a journey. For a time the two words overlapped, and Middle English scribes used them interchangeably, but by the sixteenth century the division was firm. Today 'travail' is literary and somewhat archaic, while 'travel' is one of the most common words in English.
Proto-Indo-European Roots
In every other Romance language, the descendant of *tripaliΔre means 'to work,' not 'to travel.' French 'travailler' means to work. Spanish 'trabajar' means to work. Portuguese 'trabalhar' means to work. Italian 'travagliare' means to toil or to be in distress. Only English took the word in the direction of movement. The Romance languages use entirely different words for travel: French 'voyager,' Spanish 'viajar,' Italian 'viaggiare' β all from Latin 'viΔticum' (provisions for a journey).
The agent noun 'traveler' (Middle English 'travailour') originally meant one who toils, then one who journeys. 'Travelogue' (a narrative of travel) was coined in 1903 by American lecturer Burton Holmes as a portmanteau of 'travel' and 'monologue.' The word 'travesty' is sometimes erroneously associated with 'travel' but actually comes from Italian 'travestire' (to disguise, to dress in another's clothes), from Latin 'trans-' (across) and 'vestΔ«re' (to clothe).
The deep etymology of 'travel' is a reminder that the modern experience of travel as leisure, adventure, and pleasure is historically anomalous. For most of human history, long-distance movement was dangerous, exhausting, and undertaken only out of necessity. The word itself carries that history in its bones.