Turnover

How to spell turnover

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce turnover

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does turnover mean?

1. nounThe total amount of money a business takes in over a given period, especially from sales.
2. nounThe rate at which employees leave an organisation and are replaced.
3. nounA small pastry made by folding dough over a sweet or savoury filling.
4. nounIn sport, an instance of losing possession of the ball to the opposing team.

Turnover in a sentence

• The company reported an annual turnover of two million pounds.

• High staff turnover forced the firm to keep retraining new hires.

• She baked an apple turnover for dessert.

• A careless turnover in the final minute cost the team the game.

• The cafe doubled its turnover after opening on weekends.

• The manager introduced bonuses to reduce turnover in the warehouse.

Where does turnover come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Turnover is a transparent English compound, built from the verb 'turn' and the particle 'over', and it simply names the result of something turning over. The verb 'turn' came into Old English as 'turnian' or 'tyrnan', borrowed early from the Latin 'tornare', meaning 'to round off on a lathe' or 'to turn on a wheel', which itself goes back to the Greek 'tornos', a tool for drawing circles. The particle 'over' is a native Germanic word found in Old English as 'ofer', meaning 'above' or 'across'. The compound began appearing in the early modern period and gathered several practical senses: the folded-over pastry, the rate at which something is replaced and 'turned over', and especially the commercial sense of the total value of business 'turned over' in a period. Because both halves are common everyday words, the spelling rarely trips writers up, though the choice between one word, two words, or a hyphen sometimes causes a brief pause.

How the word is built

• turn (verb/noun, to rotate)
• over (across, beyond), a compound noun from the verb phrase 'turn over'