Contour

How to spell contour

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce contour

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contour mean?

1. nounThe outline or shape of an object, surface, or area, especially its curving edge.
2. verbTo shape something so that it follows or matches a particular outline or surface.

Contour in a sentence

• noun

  The dress was cut to follow the contour of the body.

• verb

  The designers will contour the seat to support the lower back.

• noun

  Each line on the map marks the contour of the hillside.

• verb

  Engineers contour the road so it curves with the valley.

Where does contour come from?

Language of origin: French

Contour came into English in the late 1600s from French contour, which meant the outline or circuit of a figure. The French had borrowed it from Italian contorno, a noun built on the verb contornare, meaning 'to draw a line around' or 'to go around'. That verb traces back to Latin, where com- carried the sense of 'together' or simply intensified the action, and tornare meant 'to turn on a lathe', from tornus, a lathe or turning tool. The image is therefore of a line turned smoothly around the edge of something, which is exactly what a contour traces. The same tornare root turns up in the everyday words 'turn' and 'tournament', and the silent feel of the '-our' ending, identical in every dialect here, is a leftover of its French passage rather than a British spelling choice.

How the word is built

• con- (together, from Latin com-)
• tour (a turning, from Latin tornare 'to turn on a lathe')