Bout

How to spell bout

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bout

What does bout mean?

1. nounA short period of intense activity, illness, or a particular condition.
2. nounA single match or round of fighting, especially in boxing or wrestling.

Bout in a sentence

• A nasty bout of flu kept her off work for a week.

• The heavyweight bout went the full twelve rounds.

• He tackled the paperwork in a single bout of concentration.

• Both wrestlers trained hard before the title bout.

Where does bout come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bout comes from an older English form 'bought', meaning a bend, a turn, or a circuit, which traces back to a Germanic root for bending or bowing that also gives us 'bow' (to bend) and the verb 'bight'. The original idea was a single going-and-returning: a turn taken in ploughing a field, or a circuit in a contest. From that sense of one complete turn came the modern meaning of a single round of fighting, and then more loosely any short, self-contained spell of activity or illness. The word settled into its current spelling in the 1500s, when the final 'gh' of the older 'bought' form was dropped to match how it sounded. Because it once meant 'a turn', a bout of flu and a bout in the ring share the same underlying picture of one discrete stretch with a beginning and an end.

How the word is built

• bout (a turn, a going and returning; from an older sense of bending or circling)