Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

voyage

UK/ˈvojɪd͡ʒ/US/ˈvɔɪ.ɪd͡ʒ/
nounB1Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,342 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: voyages

A voyage is a long journey by sea or through space. A sea voyage, the maiden voyage, a voyage of discovery.

It is not used of ordinary land travel — you take a journey by road and a voyage by ship. Maiden voyage means a vessel's first. A voyage of discovery is used both literally and for any period of learning about something. As a verb it is literary: they voyaged for months. Note bon voyage, the French farewell used unchanged in English, and Voyager, the two spacecraft now beyond the solar system.

Definitions of voyage

  1. 1nounvoyageA long journey by sea or through space.B1

    “The voyage took about eleven weeks each way.”

voyage is a long journey.

Where it comes from

Latin viaticum meant provisions for a journey, from via, a road. French turned it into the journey itself, so a voyage is named after the packed lunch.

  1. Middle English

    viage

  2. English, today

    voyage

From Middle English viage. From Middle English viage, borrowed from Anglo-Norman viage and Old French voiage, from Latin viaticum. The modern spelling is under the influence of Modern French voyage. a doublet of viaticum.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Travel & Transport

Practise this word

voyage in the wild

  • Vespucci participated in at least two voyages of the Age of Discovery between 1497 and 1504, first on behalf of Spain and then for Portugal.

    Amerigo Vespucci

  • Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe.

    Christopher Columbus

  • On a later voyage he rescued Alexander Selkirk, a former crewmate who may have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

    William Dampier

  • The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771.

    First voyage of James Cook

  • In October, the expedition reached New Zealand; Cook was only the second European to visit there, following the first voyage of Abel Tasman 127 years earlier.

    First voyage of James Cook

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.