bourne
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
English[edit]
Noun[edit]
bourne (countable and uncountable; plural bournes)
- (countable, archaic) A boundary.
- ..and though I did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead.
- Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.
- But that the dread of something after death,/ The undiscover'd country from whose bourn[e]/ No traveller returns
- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III. Scene I.
- "For though from out our bourne of Time and Place,
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.- Tennyson 'Crossing the Bar'
- ..and though I did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead.
- (archaic) A goal or destination.
- (countable) A stream or brook in which water flows only seasonally.
