bourne

See also: Bourne, bouřné, and bouřně

English

Pronunciation

• (horse–hoarse merger)
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɔːn/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /boɹn/, [bo̞ɹn], /bʊɹn/
  • Homophone: borne (see there for more)
  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)n
• (without the horse–hoarse merger)
  • (rhotic) IPA^(key): /boːɹn/
  • (non-rhotic) IPA^(key): /boən/

Etymology 1

From Middle French borne, from Old French bodne, from Medieval Latin bodina, a word of unknown ultimate origin, but possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn (“bottom, base”), see also Proto-Celtic *bundos.

Noun

bourne (countable and uncountable, plural bournes)

1. (countable, archaic) A boundary; a limit.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (Second Quarto), London: […] I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing] […], published 1604, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i], signatures G2, recto – G2, verso:

     [T]he dread of ſomething after death, / The vndiſcouer'd country, from whoſe borne / No trauiler returnes, puzzels the will, […]

   • 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “[Our Lady of the Snows.] Father Apollinaris.”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, page 91:

     [T]hough I did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead.

   • 1889, Alfred Tennyson, Crossing the Bar:

     For though from out our bourne of Time and Place,
     The flood may bear me far,
     I hope to see my Pilot face to face
     When I have crossed the bar.

2. (archaic) A goal or destination.
   • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 12:

     I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured.

Etymology 2

From Middle English bourne, from Old English burna. Doublet of burn.

Noun

bourne (plural bournes)

1. A stream or brook in which water flows only seasonally; a small stream or brook.

Derived terms

• (seasonal stream): nailbourne, winterbourne
• (placenames): Middlebourne

Related terms

• bourn (“small stream”), burn (“stream”)

Anagrams

• unbore, unrobe