travel bug

noun

A tag stamped with a number, placed in a geocache (often attached to another item, called a hitchhiker) so that subsequent finders can take it to other caches and track its movement around the world.

“After my trip to New Zealand, I caught the travel bug: now I go abroad several times a year.”

Similar
wanderlust
Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

nountravel bug (plural travel bugs)

plural travel bugs

  1. A tag stamped with a number, placed in a geocache (often attached to another item, called a hitchhiker) so that subsequent finders can take it to other caches and track its movement around the world.

    The teams placed their travel bugs in a geocache and listed the bugs on the geocaching.com Web site […]

    Geocaching for Schools and Communities (page 182)
    1 more example

    Because moving travel bugs is a practice that is only physical in nature—you find the travel bug and then you move it to another geocache—the game's design did not require players to take part in as much conversation as I had hoped.

    2015, Christopher Holden, et al: Mobile Media Learning, page 168
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see travel, bug.

    After my trip to New Zealand, I caught the travel bug: now I go abroad several times a year.

    Synonyms: wanderlust

Synonyms & antonyms

nounUsed other than figuratively or idiomatically: see travel, bug.

Similar
wanderlust
Also see
itchy feetwanderlust

Origin

Genericized trademark from Travel Bug.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

travel bug. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/travel%20bug

MLA

“travel bug.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/travel%20bug. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “travel bug,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/travel%20bug.

Source: travel bug on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.