The verb in the first line of the
Tao Te Ching (translated by
Stephen Mitchell and others as 'The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao,' as above) is actually tao, which can mean 'express' as well as 'travel' and 'way': 'The tao that can be taoed is not the eternal Tao', if you like. A wide variety of
translations are therefore possible - I have seen 'The path that can be travelled is not the eternal Path', for instance, which is a plausible literal translation but probably misses the point of what
Lao Tzu was trying to say.
The word Tao/Dao has made its way into Japanese and Korean as do, or doh; this is often found in the names of martial arts, where it is best translated as 'way' - take Aikido (Japanese) and Tae Kwon Do (Korean), for example. In Japanese, it is contrasted with jitsu or jutsu (Chinese shu), meaning (roughly) 'techniques' or 'craft'; compare judo and jiu-jitsu, aikido and aiki-jutsu, and so on.
Another fun fact about the word Tao is that the character is composed of two others, roughly translating as 'halting steps' and 'forward' - which gives neat little glimpse into how Taoists see things working.
In Unicode Chinese characters, the opening of the Tao Te Ching looks like this, reading top to bottom then left to right (unless it's mangled by your browser):
名 道
可 可
名 道
非 非
常 常
名 道