bourne

See also: Bourne, bouřné, and bouřně

English

Etymology 1

Middle French borne, from Old French bodne, from Medieval Latin bodina, a word of unknown ultimate origin, but possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn (“bottom, base”), see also Proto-Celtic *bundos.

Noun

bourne (countable and uncountable, plural bournes)

1. (countable, archaic) A boundary.
   • c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 1:

     But that the dread of something after death, / The undiscover'd country from whose bourn[e] / No traveller returns

   • 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes:

     […] 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.

   • 1889, Alfred Tennyson, Crossing the Bar:

     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.

2. (archaic) A goal or destination.

Etymology 2

From Middle English bourne, from Old English burna.

Noun

bourne (plural bournes)

1. (countable) A stream or brook in which water flows only seasonally.

Derived terms

• (seasonal stream): nailbourne, winterbourne
• (placenames): Middlebourne

Related terms

• (seasonal stream): bourn (“small stream”), burn (“stream”)

Anagrams

• unbore, unrobe