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The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology | 1996 | | © The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1996, originally published by Oxford University Press 1996. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

travail (arch.) labour, toil; labour of childbirth. XIII. — (O)F. travail painful effort, trouble, work f. (O)F. travailler (whence obs. or arch. travail vb. XIII) :- Rom. *trepāliāre, f. medL. trepālium instrument of torture, presumably f. L. trēs, tria THREE + pālus stake. The etymol. meaning of the vb. was ‘put to torture’, whence, through the refl. use (‘put onself to pain’) the sense ‘toil, labour’, which survives in F., whereas the Eng. vb. ult. became restricted to the sense ‘journey’, with the sp. travel (XIV).
Hence traveller (-ER1) XIV; traveller's joy kind of clematis which adorns the wayside XVI. travelogue talk or lecture about travel. XX. irreg., with -logue of monologue, dialogue.

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T. F. HOAD. "travail." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 27 Nov. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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