Abstract: Over the centuries, the language of tourism –which is “technical” in broad sense– has continued to assimilate new words that have literally travelled around the world. The purpose of this article is to retrace that journey by examining some terms that are typical of tourism language, especially those of the Mediterranean region. The sea –seen both as a starting point and a destination, as the heart of travel and the source of evocative allusions– has inspired a specific vocabulary, now requisite to name some things and extraordinarily useful to elaborate upon others.
