Word.ws English Dictionary

bourne

UK/bɔːn/US/boɹn/

bourne noun: a boundary; a limit.

Noun (1)

bourne (countable and uncountable, plural bournes)

  1. (archaic, countable) A boundary; a limit.
    • [T]he dread of ſomething after death, / The vndiſcouer'd country, from whoſe borne / No trauiler returnes, puzzels the will, […]c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (Second Quarto), London: […] I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing] […], published 1604...
    • [T]hough 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.1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “[Our Lady of the Snows.] Father Apollinaris.”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, page 91
  2. (archaic) A goal or destination.
    • I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured.1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding...

Noun (2)

bourne (plural bournes)

  1. A stream or brook in which water flows only seasonally; a small stream or brook.

Proper noun capitalized: Bourne

Bourne

  1. A market town and civil parish with a town council in South Kesteven district, Lincolnshire, England (OS grid ref TF0920).
  2. A river in Wiltshire, England, which flows into the Salisbury-Hampshire Avon.
  3. A small river in Dorset, England, which flows into the English Channel at Bournemouth.
  4. Either of two rivers in Surrey, England, passing through Chertsey and Addlestone before converging and flowing into the Thames.
  5. A small river in Kent, England, which joins the River Medway.
  6. A town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, named after Jonathan Bourne Sr.
    • It'd be roughly on par with 2003's Bouchard No. 120 oil spill, in which an estimated 98,000 gallons spilled into Buzzards Bay off the coast of Bourne, Massachusetts.2015 May 21, Eliott C. McLaughlin, “How does Santa Barbara match up with other U.S. oil spills?”, in CNN, archived from the original on 01 Apr 2016
  7. A surname.
    • When HBO airs “Behind the Candelabra” on May 26, the world will get to see Matt Damon play Liberace’s drug-addled, surgically enhanced lover – a role about as far from Jason Bourne as it gets.2013 March 11, Adam Markovitz, “Matt Damon on (maybe) returning to ‘Bourne’ and playing Liberace’s lover”, in CNN, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2021

bourne meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

bourne in Hindi

बोर्न, बॉर्न

bourne in Tamil

பௌர்ன்

bourne in Marathi

बोर्न, बॉर्न

bourne in Urdu

بورن
More languagesFewer languages
bourne in Bengali
বোর্ন
bourne in Malayalam
ബോർൺ
bourne in Gujarati
બોર્ન, બૉર્ન
bourne in Odia
ବୋର୍ନ
bourne in Nepali
बोर्न, बोर्ने

Forms of bourne

pluralbournes

Plural of bourne: bournes

Origin of bourne

From 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.

From Middle English bourne, from Old English burna. Doublet of burn.

The placename and English surname are derived from Old English burna (“stream”), whence also the common noun bourne (“stream”).

Words formed from bourne

Phrases with bourne

Words that rhyme with bourne

25 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bourne

What does bourne mean?
Bourne means a boundary; a limit.
What is bourne in Hindi?
Bourne in Hindi is बोर्न, बॉर्न. See Bourne meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is bourne?
Bourne can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bourne?
Bourne is pronounced /bɔːn/ (UK).
What is the plural of bourne?
The plural of bourne is bournes.

Words near bourne in the dictionary

  1. bourlaw
  2. bourlaws
  3. bourn
  4. Bournbrook
  5. Bournda
  6. bourne
  7. Bourne End
  8. Bourne test
  9. Bourne tests
  10. Bournemouth
  11. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bourne (page history and authors); Bourne (page history and authors); bourne (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bourne (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bourne.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bourne. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.