It seems safe to say that, until about the year 1835, this word was uniformly spelt with two l’s, in the English mode, and that the excision of one l was a gradual process. For traveller, see ILLY, 1803; BUG, 1815; ELEGANT, 1821; GOUGE, 1828; FIX, 1830; LIKE A BOOK, 1833; TRAIL, 1833; GANDER-PULLING, 1834; TRACE, 1834; BLOCK, 1855; STRIKE, 1859. In 1828, Mr. Flint writes, “Travelling is a pleasure which none can afford to enjoy, but the rich.”—(‘Arthur Clenning,’ ii. 129). Other examples occur in this Glossary, passim. In Notes and Queries, 6 S. ii. 471, the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer defends the spelling now used in America.
1824. “Z. T.,” writing to the Woodstock (Vt.) Observer, Jan. 13, p. 3/2, alludes to the comet as “this celestial traveller.”
1832. S. G. Goodrich, in his ‘System of Universal Geography’ (Boston), uniformly has travelling.
1835. “A Chapter on Travelers.”—Knick. Mag., vi. 253 (Sept.).
1838. “A Traveler” wrote an account of the Cumberland Waterfall to the Richmond Enquirer: The Jeffersonian, Albany, Nov. 24, p. 325.
1845. See STRIKE.
1850. Here and there you may meet with a traveled lady who becomes a pretty subject for salon celebrity.—D. G. Mitchell, ‘The Lorgnette,’ i. 59 (1852).
1850. I am no apologist for the innovations of our great lexicographer [Noah Webster], and do not rest my quickness in reform, upon spelling traveler with a single l.—Id., ii. 84.
1860. The Atlantic objects to “traveling,” perhaps because it hasn’t traveled; for it talks of provincialisms as if it had always lived in the provinces.—Yale Lit. Mag., xxv. 233, 265.
1869. See HOG AND HOMINY.
