Other forms: traveled, travelled, travels, traveling, travelling
To travel is to go on a journey, especially a long one. Travel abroad, travel by train, she travels for work.
The noun is uncountable for the activity — air travel, travel insurance — and travels in the plural means a particular set of journeys: his travels in Asia. What English does not have is a countable a travel: the word for one journey is a trip or a journey, and this is one of the commonest errors learners make. Note the British double l in travelled and travelling against the American single, and that light travels and news travels are both ordinary uses.
1verbtravelTo go on a journey, especially a long one.
“They travelled across four countries in a fortnight.”
2nounactivityThe activity of travelling.
“Air travel has never been cheaper or less pleasant.”
3verblightOf light, sound or news, to move from one place to another.
“Bad news travels faster than good.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
travel is a way of journeying.
Old French travailler meant to toil or to suffer, and behind it is Late Latin trepalium, a three-staked instrument of torture. Travelling and travail are the same word, and the connection is a fair report of what a journey was like before roads.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂ǵ-
Old French
travailler — to trouble, suffer, be worn out
gmw-msc
travailen — to toil, work, travel
Middle English
travelen — to make a laborious journey, travel
English, today
travel
From Middle English travelen (“to make a laborious journey, travel”) from gmw-msc travailen (“to toil, work, travel”), alteration of Middle English travaillen (“to toil, work”), from Old French travailler (“to trouble, suffer, be worn out”). See the doublets a doublet of travail and travois. Compare typologically routine << rupta via. Note the inverse semantic vectors: travel moves from a subjective state (toil) to an objective action (journey), while routine moves from an objective object (beaten path) to a subjective pattern (habit). Largely displaced native fare, from Old English faran (“to go [a long distance], to travel”). More at fare.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA