سافَرَ sāfara, v: to travel, go on a journey

Sāfara is the common verb[1] for travel. Befitting not the trip to the bodega, but the JFK-CDG red eye, it is entirely unremarkable – or it would be if not for its derivation. Its seldom-used root سَفَرَ safara (“to unveil”) hints at a more elliptical meaning. Hence:[2]

That travel can be revelatory is not merely the province of regional tourism boards (“Discover New England!”), but an animating principle rooted in the most fundamental of expressions.

[1] In the masculine perfect form.

[2] These examples of safara appear in Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, reprint (Beirut, 1968), I: 1370.