Introduction

Introduction, The Introduction, Intro, or The Intro may refer to:

Indefinite and fictitious numbers

Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier".

General placeholder names

English has many words whose definition includes an indefinite quantity, such as "lots", "many", "several", and "some". These placeholders can and often do have a generally equivalent numeral counterpart, e.g., "a couple" meaning two (2) or "a few" meaning approximately 3 to 8. Other placeholders can quantify items by describing how many fit into something that could change based on size, e.g., "a handful" represents more peanuts than apples. Larger quantities can be described by "half-dozen" (six units), "dozen(s)" (twelve units per dozen), and less commonly "tens", or "scores" (twenty units per score). Still larger quantities are described as hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, etc.

Travel

Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations, and can involve travel by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, airplane, or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.

Etymology

The origin of the word "travel" is most likely lost to history. The term "travel" may originate from the Old French word travail. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the first known use of the word travel was in the 14th century. It also states that the word comes from Middle English travailen, travelen (which means to torment, labor, strive, journey) and earlier from Old French travailler (which means to work strenuously, toil). In English we still occasionally use the words travail and travails, which mean struggle. According to Simon Winchester in his book The Best Travelers' Tales (2004), the words travel and travail both share an even more ancient root: a Roman instrument of torture called the tripalium (in Latin it means "three stakes", as in to impale). This link reflects the extreme difficulty of travel in ancient times. Also note the torturous connotation of the word "travailler." Today, travel may or may not be much easier depending upon the destination you choose (i.e., Mt. Everest, the Amazon rainforest), how you plan to get there (tour bus, cruise ship, or oxcart), and whether or not you decide to "rough it (see extreme tourism and adventure travel). "There's a big difference between simply being a tourist and being a true world traveler," notes travel writer Michael Kasum. This is, however, a contested distinction as academic work on the cultures and sociology of travel has noted.