Tour
nounA journey visiting a number of places, often for pleasure, work, or sightseeing.
How to spell tour
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce tour
What does tour mean?
- nounA journey visiting a number of places, often for pleasure, work, or sightseeing.
- verbTo travel through a place or region, typically visiting several locations.
Tour in a sentence
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noun
The guided tour of the cathedral lasts about an hour.
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verb
They plan to tour the vineyards of southern France in autumn.
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noun
The band announced a world tour starting next spring.
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verb
The orchestra will tour three continents this year.
Where does tour come from?
Language of origin: French
The word arrived in English in the late 1300s from the Old French tour, meaning 'a turn' or 'a circuit', which itself descended from the Latin tornus, a lathe or turner's tool used for shaping things in the round. The underlying idea was of turning in a circle and coming back to where you started, so a journey that loops around and returns naturally became a 'tour'. From the sixteenth century onward the sense of a planned trip taking in several places became dominant, and the famous 'Grand Tour' of Europe undertaken by young aristocrats fixed the travel meaning firmly in English. The same Latin tornus also gives us 'turn' and 'tornado', all sharing the notion of rotation. The spelling keeps the French -our ending, which is why it is so easy to confuse it by ear with words like 'tore' or 'tower'.
How the word is built
- tour (from Old French tor/tour: a turn, a circuit)
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