Other forms: cruises, cruising, cruised
A cruise is a holiday spent on a huge ship that visits port after port. Go on a cruise, a Mediterranean cruise, cruise ship.
The ships have grown to carry several thousand passengers, and the effect of that many arriving at once is now a live argument in Venice, Barcelona and elsewhere. As a verb it also means to travel at a steady economical speed — cruising altitude, cruise control. Note that the word comes from a Dutch verb meaning to cross.
1nouncruiseA holiday spent on a ship visiting several ports.
“For their anniversary, they went on a cruise around the Greek islands.”
2verbtravelTo travel at a steady economical speed.
“The plane cruised at a steady height above the clouds.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cruise is a voyage.
Dutch kruisen means to cross or sail to and fro, from kruis, a cross, from Latin crux. Crusade and crux come from the same cross.
Latin
crux
Middle Dutch
cruce
Dutch
kruisen — cross, sail around
English, today
cruise
Built from
Dutch kruisen (“cross, sail around”), from kruis (“cross”), from Middle Dutch cruce, from Latin crux.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA