What is the difference between tour and excursion

Journey may indicate a long distance or a short one travelled regularly daily journey to work, for example. One has to understand what a trip means. While mostly will not agree to this, but all of the above terms comes in the definition of trip. In the context of a school visit to a science museum, both words are possible. Neither would violate any grammar rules, but excursion may sound a little unnatural and forced. Bobby's class is taking a trip to the science museum on Friday.

Bobby's class is taking an excursion to the science museum on Friday. In my mind, the first sentence sounds more natural — possibly because, in schools, such events are often called field trips. Plus, excusion simply seems like too fancy a word to use for an ordinary field trip. However, let's say I volunteer to be a chaperone on the trip, and I'm talking to a coworker about it the following Monday.

I might say:. I chaperoned Bobby's field trip to the museum last Friday. It was a nice little trip. It was a nice little excursion. In this case, I like the second one better. For one, it avoids reusing the word "trip" by the way, such repetition isn't always bad, although it can play a factor in word selection.

More importantly, though, excursion seems to fit better in the context of "nice little" — particularly if I'm trying to emphasize that part of my enjoyment stemmed from the fact that I got out of my workplace for a day. In short, when choosing between two synonyms, context often plays a major part in choosing which word to use.

Oftentimes, the simpler, more common word is the better one to use, because the fancier word sounds pretentious or unnatural. However, at other times, the synonym might carry some small nuance that makes it a better choice. Going back to the comment you made, excursion might also be a better word if the class is taking a four-day trip to the national capital.

In that case trip seems like too ordinary a word for such an elaborate undertaking — one that involves hotel stays and multiple destinations. Avoid using less common words like excursion just for the sake of sounding erudite. As often than not, such efforts will backfire. Only time and experience can help you decide if a fancy synonym would improve your sentence, or seem like an unnatual force-fit.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What's the difference between "trip" and "excursion"? Ask Question. Asked 6 years ago. Active 4 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 37k times. In the Longman Dictionary, "Excursion" is defined as: a short journey made for pleasure, usually by several people together This is similar to "to go on a trip".

People make tours for various reasons. There are lots of physical and psychological health benefits of taking tours. For instance, taking a tour is an effective way of cutting down on stress, consequently leading to minimize your chances of developing cardiac diseases. Furthermore, simply sticking to your daily routine for a long time can bring you more harm than good. Tours can passively help you to disconnect from your monotonous everyday life.

Most significantly, tours into varying communities give you the opportunity to grow empathy towards alien cultures. In brief, the purpose of taking tours may differ from one person to another, but going on tours always gives a chance to develop empathy and a deeper understanding of foreign cultures. An excursion is an outing made by a group of people for leisure, physical purposes, education, socializing, etc. Most often, an excursion takes place as an adjunct to a longer journey or a tour.

Going on an excursion allows you many benefits. Most importantly, excursions educate you while allowing you to have a memorable time. Similar to a tour, when you are engaged in an excursion, you are always going to explore something new.

For example, an expedition to the South Pole can be an arduous journey, which needs to be well-planned. Read the following sentences to understand the meaning of expedition in different contexts. The kingdom was thrown into chaos when the crown prince was killed on a hunting expedition. Such an arderous expedition requires enormous bravery and courage.

In the past ten years, there have been six research expeditions to that area. The team of researchers is organizing a research expedition into the heart of the Sahara desert. An excursion is a short trip for pleasure. Excursion is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as.