It was apparently Ralph Waldo Emerson who first told us that the journey is more important than the destination. It’s become such a cliché that we often overlook the truth of it, for what can be better than arriving at somewhere wonderful?
Before you scream airports, delays, small children, and other joblijocks (aka hindrances), it is worth contemplating the lexicon of travel which, as it happens, caters for both lovers and haters of being on the move.
Travel
Let’s get this one out of the way, and immediately introduce a note of cynicism, for ‘travel’ and ‘travail’ are brothers in arms and ‘travail’ means, well, sheer pain. It gets worse, however, for the ancestor of each is the Latin trepalium, an instrument of torture consisting of a rack with three stakes. You can make your own mind up, but this fact is worth bearing in mind when your flight is cancelled and you’re sleeping on the airport floor.
Journey
If you experience real travail on your travels, you might long for the original meaning of the word ‘journey’, which comes from the French for ‘day’, because most journeys in the Middle Ages lasted one day before your horse was pooped and you needed to stop.
Holiday
On the other hand, holidays have always been special, particularly for those of a religious persuasion, for a holiday was literally a ‘holy day’. And a red-letter day, one that is particularly memorable, takes its name from the fact that saints’ days and festivals were marked in red in the calendar.
Gadwaddick
What better approach to a free day than going on a gadwaddick? This two-hundred-year-old word from English dialect means simply ‘going on a jaunt’.
Coddiwomple
This far more recent creation also has its converts, for coddiwompling embodies Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice and means setting off purposefully towards nowhere in particular.
Fernweh
While gadwaddicking and coddiwompling can happen close to home (there’s a sentence), most of us feel an intense desire to travel far away. For this we have the German Fernweh, ‘far-sickness’, and summarizes the longing to be anywhere but here.
Read More: Susie Dent’s Top 10s: Ten words to make you sigh
Dépaysement
Travel can bring on mixed emotions. Excitement, anxiety, anticipation, and dread: such are some of the ingredients waiting for us as we prepare to depart. The Norwegians might call it gruglede, which essentially means ‘to dread something happily’. When we arrive, we experience a temporary feeling of disorientation, and of being entirely out of our comfort zone. This is what the French know as dépaysement, literally ‘decountrification’. Is it always a bad thing? Absolutely not, for only when we fall off our personal map do we discover something new.
Pregret
This useful blend from recent years captures for many of us the essence of going on holiday, when we shed our inhibitions and go for it, safe in our new-found anonymity. Pregret is knowing in advance that you’re going to regret something, but going ahead and doing it anyway.
Queem
It may sound like the latest from Joey Essex, but ‘queem’ dates back a thousand years. Its meaning is pretty similar, though, for to be ‘queem’ is to be immensely satisfied with life and where it’s headed.
Kalsarikännit
Sometimes, though, all is very much not queem, which is when it’s worth remembering the benefits of a staycation. For those of us who embrace staying put, I offer you the Finnish word kalsarikännit. In a single word this conveys the pleasure that you know will come from staying at home and getting drunk in your underwear.
