Turnaround

How to spell turnaround

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce turnaround

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does turnaround mean?

1. nounA dramatic change from a bad or failing situation to a successful one.
2. nounThe amount of time taken to complete a task or process and return the result.

Turnaround in a sentence

• The new manager led a remarkable turnaround in the struggling department.

• The lab promised a 48-hour turnaround on all blood tests.

• The company's financial turnaround surprised every analyst on the call.

• A faster turnaround on invoices improved the firm's cash flow.

Where does turnaround come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, built from the native verb 'turn' and the adverb 'around'. The verb 'turn' descends from Old English 'turnian' and 'tyrnan', which were themselves early borrowings from the Latin 'tornare', meaning 'to round off on a lathe', from 'tornus', a turner's wheel; that is why the literal idea of rotation sits at its heart. 'Around' is a much later Middle English formation, joining the prefix 'a-' (meaning 'in' or 'on') to 'round'. The two words were first paired as a phrasal verb, 'to turn around', and only in the twentieth century did the joined noun 'turnaround' settle into common use, first for the physical act of reversing a vehicle and then, by extension, for any swift reversal of fortune or the time needed to complete and return a job. Because both halves are everyday words, the only real spelling question is whether to write it solid, hyphenated, or as two words, and modern usage has firmly settled on the single solid form.

How the word is built

• turn (verb: to rotate or reverse direction)
• around (adverb: in the opposite direction)