Turn

How to spell turn

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce turn

What does turn mean?

1. verbTo move so as to face or go in a different direction, or to rotate around a point.
2. nounAn opportunity or duty that comes to each person in succession, or an act of rotating.

Turn in a sentence

• verb

  Please turn left at the second set of traffic lights.

• noun

  It is your turn to wash the dishes tonight.

• verb

  She had to turn the heavy key twice to unlock the door.

• noun

  The players waited patiently for each turn in the game.

Where does turn come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The history of this word is a tangle of two streams that flowed together. The native English side is the Old English verb tyrnan or turnian, meaning to rotate or revolve, while the borrowed side is the Old French torner, carrying much the same sense. Both ultimately trace to the Latin tornare, which literally meant to turn something on a lathe, from tornus, the lathe or turner's chisel itself. That Latin word was in turn taken from the Greek tornos, a tool for drawing circles. Because the meaning is so basic and physical, turn spread into dozens of everyday uses, from a bend in the road to a person's allotted go in a game, all built on the simple idea of rotation. The spelling is mercifully regular, with the only mild snag being the unstressed -ur- vowel.

How the word is built

• turn (single root, from Latin tornare 'to turn on a lathe'); no prefix or suffix