excursion

An excursion is a short trip away from what you were doing, with the return already built in. The word joins ex, out, and the Latin for run: you leave the straight line, go and look, and come back. That is why a school excursion is not a holiday. It works beyond trips too: a speaker who talks about their dog for two minutes has made an excursion. In the animation, a man paddles a pink rubber dinghy, delighted, in a puddle on the pavement.