Journey vs trip

"Trip" and "journey"

To my knowledge, a "trip" is "a short journey". e.g

a) We went on a trip to the seaside.

b)We went on a train journey across North America

While they essentially convey the same idea, there are indeed a couple of differences between these words:

journey (noun)

A journey is one single piece of travel. You make journeys when you travel from one place to another. (Note that the plural is spelt journeys, not journies). Also journey implies time spent travelling from one place t

To me "go on a journey" sounds a bit weird. When you say "go on X", X should be some activity that is pleasant to you: go on a ride, go on a date, etc., Etymologically "journey" comes from a French word "journee" which means "a day's labor or travel (=trouble)". On the other hand the original sense of "trip" is "striking the ground with the foot in sign of joy". So I feel "go on a trip" is much mo

Paco, I think that it is simply 'trip' itself that is more current than 'journey'; the latter word is aging generally, I sense.

Mister MicawberPaco, I think that it is simply 'trip' itself that is more current than 'journey'; the latter word is aging generally, I sense.

Do you mean the word "journey" is getting obsolete? It may be so. In my native language nowadays people prefer "ryokou" to "tabi". By the way I found there is a subtle difference between AmE and BrE in the usage distrib

'Journey' is still healthy in BrE; 'it's a long journey', 'a comfortable journey', 'safe journey', 'ten-journey ticket', 'bus journey', etc. Rail and bus operators use it in their literature.

'To go on a journey' does seem a little too much, though. Maybe travelling isn't such a big deal these days. Even London to Sydney is a 'trip'.

MrP

PS:

It's almost as if journey and trip had changed places: the former is now used for short trips, the latter for long journeys.

MrP

MrPedanticIt's almost as if journey and trip had changed places: the former is now used for short trips, the latter for long journeys.

This may be true. I found an article below online.

Intercity bus service ranges from poor to nonexistent throughout the Benelux countries. This is not as bad as it sounds, because the rail ne

Nice googling!

A further thought: perhaps transport providers (bus, rail, etc) use the more formal 'journey' to demonstrate (not necessarily consciously) that they take your travel seriously. (You can use an online 'journey planner', for instance.)

(The passenger might feel obscurely affronted, if they talked about 'the stages of your trip'.)

MrP

I agree entirely with 'rwiles'. In fact I can think of nothing useful to add, save to say that, since people take a long journey far less often than a short trip, I would expect to find "trip" used more often than "journey". But both words are still very much in use.