Tournure

noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Manner, bearing. countable, uncountable

    "Fortunately, your Parisian tournure will save your vivacity from vulgarity. Though, I must say, not one English girl in a thousand is to be trusted out of the security of insipidity; but you are French enough to be animated without being pert."

  2. 2
    Turn; contour; figure. countable, uncountable

    "[…] the word serpentine does not express the great line which makes the elegant tournure of a statue; for nature does not permit our head, in its ordinary motions, to turn more than a fourth of the circumference either to the right or to the left."

  3. 3
    Phrasing, turn of phrase. countable, uncountable

    "Voiture belonged to a race of poets essentially French, who sacrificed to the graces instead of the muses; to whom Cupid, with his wings and arrows, was the ideal of love, and whose art of poetry consisted in epigram, tournure, readiness, and facility."

  4. 4
    Any device used by women to expand the skirt of a dress below the waist; a bustle. countable, uncountable

Etymology

Borrowed from French tournure, from tourner (“to turn”).

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