Long journey?

[Thistledew]

If someone told you that they had had a “long journey” would you think:

a) they had travelled a long distance
b) they had travelled a relatively short and routine route but that it had taken them much longer than usual
c) either of those options

Anyone?

C) either of those, depending on the context.

I'd be thinking an actual long journey because a short journey that's taken ages due to delays is still not a long journey. It's just a short journey that's taken a longer than normal time to complete. Not the same thing.

Depends on context.

I do a 200mile drive reasonably regularly. (Which is long anyway). But sometimes its a lot more tiring than others. It has taken between 3.5hrs and 7hrs before.

C

Both.

We regularly do a trip to Mull from Bristol. It takes 10-12 hours (shared) driving, including 1 one hour sea crossing (winter) or 1 loch crossing and 1 short sea crossing (summer).
It's a long journey, especially when you think after 12 hours in a plane would get us half way across the globe.
Unfortunately road or rail plus sea is the only way to get to Mull. There's no airport.

Would you refer to a regular commute as a “journey”? It’s a quirk of the English language, I think. You would say “My journey to work took a long time today” to mean that your regular commute was subject to delays, but saying “I had a long journey to work today” I think implies you have had to travel further than normal.

What are you asking?

A long journey is a long journey. When I drove to France and it's 14 hours it's a long journey. When I go round the m25 and expect an hour and it takes three, it's a longer than normal journey.

My question came from yet another silly way I’ve offended my MIL. I came back from work today. She was at my house having looked after DS for a couple of hours. She commented “You’ve had a long journey today”. I replied “No, I only went to X as usual” (20 miles, but the traffic was very slow coming home). I thought that she had assumed I had been further afield. She got snippy with me for ‘correcting’ her when clearly she was referring to the travel time not the distance. I so often find that I have to interpret what she says as we seem to use language very differently. I was just trying to gauge whether I had any proper basis to misinterpret what she said.

"Long journey" definitely refers to a LOT of miles. Way more than 20 miles too.

"You've had a longer than usual journey" would refer to time and, potentially, miles.

It's that simple.

Long is an adjective that can apply to time and distance.

Neither of you were particularly "wrong" in usage, but her getting snippy about it is daft.