An Etymology of “Tourism”

Neil Leiper
Sydney Technical College
Broadway, NSW,Australia

The year 1811 is given by the Oxford English Dictionary for the first
appearance of the word “tourism.” The root or etymology, according to that
and other dictionaries, is the Greek word for a tool used in describing a
circle. In a sense, tourism intrinsically involves a circular itinerary in that
tourists return to their point of origin, home.
There is another possibility, one that is quite intriguing. It comes from an
unsigned article in International Tourism History, a British periodical that
seems to have had a brief life a few years ago. When the present writer
returned to the library where that article had been discovered for the
purpose of making some notes, the few copies of the periodical had been
discarded, so what follows is in part from memory. Subsequent research
discovered that the basic facts set out in the article are true, but the
specifics upon which the etymology rests have not been confirmed. For
researchers who appreciate such challenges, testing the truth of what
follows might be seen as a worthwhile pursuit.
The article implies that before the 1500s. the words “tourist” and
“tourism” did not exist. “Tour” was used, certainly in its French context of
“tower”: theGreek root is obvious here, since most towers traditionally were
circular. As far as has been ascertained by this writer, travel literature in the
medieval era did not use the terms “tour, ” “tourist,” or “tourism.” Instead.
we find words such as “‘journeying,” “ travel” and its original form “tra-
vail”. . . an instrument of torture (shades of modern day jets in the over-
crowded economy section), and terms denoting particular forms of travel
such as “pilgrimage.” A recent study on pilgrimage in medieval times sees
that phenomenon as the “tourism” of the age, and refers to the “tourism

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Annuls q~Tourism Research. Vol 10. pp. 277~281. 1983 0160~7383/83 3.00 r 00
PrInted in the USA All rights resrrvrd. @ 1983 J. Jafari and Pergamon Press Ltd

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