What's the difference between the words "journey", "travel" and "trip"? [closed]

Solution 1:

• Travel (uncountable n.) and travelling are used to mean the general activity of moving from place to place. You do NOT say "a travel". When we use it as a verb, we talk about how we travel to work; abroad; school, etc. And we might mention the means of transport, e.g. "I travel to school by bus", "They travelled on foot". As a noun, travel or travelling is often collocated with holidays. We say: ‘I love travelling’ or ‘He had fond memories of his travels to India’, in those cases it is not interchangeable with journey. source

(i) We decided to travel by car. We travelled through France and into Germany.
(ii) When I finished college I went travelling for six months. source

• trip, n. is often said when going out somewhere; it could be taking a short holiday, or travelling some distance for business purposes, and staying at a hotel overnight; very often it is a short journey abroad. We often say: a business trip; a weekend trip; a day trip, and a school trip. But you can also ‘take a long (plane/road/boat) trip’ to somewhere.

• journey, n. is usually a long trip of some kind; it can be any kind of trip, but the implication is that it may be arduous and discoveries might be made along the way. You can also talk about your journey to work, if the distance is particularly long, time consuming or wrought with delays such as; roadworks, heavy traffic, etc.

The trio has been in Oman for the last two weeks preparing for the journey.

As we set off on time we were warned that the train would be late into Liverpool Street - the estimate was 30 minutes. That was an under-estimate thanks to two problems familiar to rail travellers - at first a points failure at Bethnal Green which was going to add to the delay and then a signal failure at Romford which added to the delay still further. We got to London just after 11— a three-hour journey which normally takes 1 hour 54 minutes. source

Solution 2:

Travel

• by means of getting somewhere. You can travel by car, foot, bike plane, ship...
• you can also travel in basketball if you take too many steps without dribbling

Trip

• to me this is something with a basic itinerary. You plan a trip. A business trip. A weekend get away trip. But you know when you are leaving, when you are getting back, and more or less what you are doing.
• can also mean to make someone fall by sticking out your foot or some other object. If you plan it right, right before they fall you can say "Have a great trip!"
• it can mean a short drug induced metaphysical experience. You can go on an acid trip. But it is short lived to maybe a few hours or a day.

Journey

• a longer experience where you may have some sort of idea what you may do but really have nothing in the plans other than the start. A journey is something that has plans that may change at will. There could be a few trips in a journey and certainly a lot of travel.
• journey can also designate a group experience. An "instructor" could take you on a journey to do or learn something. The fact is you don't exactly know where you are going, although you may know the main topics or such.

Solution 3:

Used in the context of going from A to B, those words can be safely used interchangeably, though 'journey' and 'travel' bring with them a greater feeling of distance, scope and time than 'trip'.

However, when the context shifts away from holidays, they aren't always so similar.

You can't, for example, say that somebody 'tripped', 'journeyed' and 'travelled' up the stairs without implying different things, as the person could have fallen over, the stairs could be epically long, they could be very hard to climb or the manner in which the person is walking could make the climb difficult.