A voyager is someone who makes a long journey, especially by sea, and usually one with some risk or discovery in it. Behind the word is a picture: a wooden ship, months of water, a coast nobody has drawn yet. That is why it fits explorers of the past so naturally, and why it has been carried over to space — a traveller between the planets is a voyager too, and NASA gave the name to its famous Voyager probes. It is a written, slightly literary word. In real life, someone flying to Tokyo is a *passenger* or a *traveller*, not a voyager. Use *voyager* when you want the weight of distance and adventure. It also has a second, gentler life in figurative writing: a person exploring an inner or unfamiliar world can be called a voyager — "a voyager in the country of grief". A small historical note: in Canadian history, the French spelling *voyageur* names the men who paddled canoes and carried furs across the north, and that is a different, specific word — don't swap the two.