bourne, bourn, n.2
(bɔən)
Also 6–7 borne.
[Early mod.Eng. borne, a. F. borne (formerly occas. bourne), app. = OF. bodne, bone, boune (see bound n.1). In Eng. in Lord Berners, and in Shakespeare (seven times), then app. not till 18th c.; the modern use being due to Shakespeare, and in a large number of cases directly alluding to the passage in Hamlet. Confused in spelling with bourn n.1
(The history of borne in Fr. is uncertain; Littré suggests that it arose from the later bone, boune by the intercalation of r; Diez supposed a substitution of r for d in the earlier bodne; M. Paul Meyer says ‘bodne, bosne, borne is an admissible phonetic series, the more so that Pr. has a dim. bózola, and a n. bozolar (borner, limiter)’.)]
† 1. A boundary (between fields, etc.). Obs.
| 1523 Ld. Berners Froiss. I. ccxii. 257 All..places, lyenge bitwene the boundes and bournes folowynge. Ibid. The foresayd boundes and bornes in the article of Calais. 1610 Shakes. Temp. ii. i. 152 Borne, bound of Land, Tilth, Vineyard none. 1611 ― Wint. T. i. ii. 134 One that fixes No borne 'twixt his and mine. 1731 Bailey, Borns, Limits, bounds, etc. Shakes. 1790 Cowper Iliad xviii. 679 Oft as in their course They came to the field's bourn. |
2. A bound, a limit. (Approaching 3.) arch.
| 1606 Shakes. Ant. & Cl. i. i. 16 Ile set a bourne how farre to be belou'd. 1727 Thomson Summer 99 From the far bourne Of utmost Saturn. 1847 Tennyson Princ. Concl. 100 A shout..rang Beyond the bourn of sunset. 1858 Sears Athan. iii. vii. 312 A sphere above the natural, and within the bourn of immortality. |
3. The limit or terminus of a race, journey, or course; the ultimate point aimed at, or to which anything tends; destination, goal. (Somewhat poetic: often fig.)
[Shakespeare's famous passage probably meant the ‘frontier or pale’ of a country; but has been associated contextually with the goal of a traveller's course.]
| [1602 Shakes. Ham. iii. i. 79 The dread of something after death, The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No Traueller returnes. a 1761 Fawkes Sparrow (R.) Dismal regions! from whose bourn No pale travellers return.] c 1800 K. White On Prayer in Rem. (1839) 433 The means employed to arrive at the bourn of our desires. 1805 Wordsw. Prel. ii. (1850) 35 The selected bourne Was now an Island. 1865 M. Arnold Ess. Crit. vi. (1865) 212 Perhaps, even of the life of Pindar's time, Pompeii was the inevitable bourne. |
¶ incorrectly for: Realm, domain. [A misunderstanding of the passage in Hamlet.] Obs.
| 1818 Keats Endym. iii. 31 A thousand Powers keep religious state, In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne. 1827 Praed Poems (1865) II. 218 No dame should come To be the queen of his bourn. |
4. In comb. bourne-stone (formed by Carlyle from F. borne), a boundary stone.
| 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. II. i. iii. 23 Chaumette..one already descries..on bourne-stone of the thoroughfares. 1858 Kingsley St. Maura 56 As you preached and prayed From rock and bourne-stone. |