Excursion

How to spell excursion

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce excursion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does excursion mean?

1. nounA short journey or outing, typically made for pleasure, study, or sightseeing.

Excursion in a sentence

• The museum organised a guided excursion to the old harbour.

• Our hotel package included a day excursion into the mountains.

Where does excursion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin excursio, in its accusative form excursionem, which named a running out or a sally, and even a military raid. It was built from the verb excurrere, joining ex- meaning 'out' to currere meaning 'to run', so the literal idea was simply 'to run out'. English adopted it in the late 1500s, at first carrying senses of a raid or a digression before settling into the friendly modern meaning of a short pleasure trip away from home. The very same currere root runs through a large family of English words, including current, courier, occur, and recur, all of which share that notion of running or flowing. Keeping that 'curs' core in mind helps with the spelling, because the ending is the noun suffix -sion rather than the -tion that catches so many writers.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• curs (run, from Latin currere)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)