Word.ws English Dictionary

tour d'horizon

/ˈtʊə(ɹ)ˌdɒɹɪˈzɒn/

tour d'horizon noun: an extensive tour; figuratively, a wide-ranging or general survey.

Noun

tour d'horizon (plural tours d'horizon)

  1. An extensive tour; figuratively, a wide-ranging or general survey.
    • The observation plane made two lazy circles in the darkening sky and then, not wanting to be caught up there with full night coming, it broke off the second tour d'horizon and headed home, south and east.2007, James Brady, Warning of War: A Novel of the North China Marines
    • This chapter provided a tour d'horizon of survey documentation as it stands today and might develop in the near future.2012, Edith D. de Leeuw, Joop Hox, Don Dillman, International Handbook of Survey Methodology, page 419

Examples of tour d'horizon in a sentence

  • A tour d'horizon of the Western Hemisphere showed slavery confined to the American South, Brazil, and Cuba.2014, William A. Blair, Journal of the Civil War Era: Summer 2014 Issue, page 227:
  • The book that remained at my side while I wrote this novel was Juliet Gardiner's brilliant and enthralling tour d'horizon The Thirties (2010).2015, Anthony Quinn, Curtain Call, page 389:

Forms of tour d'horizon

pluraltours d'horizon

Origin of tour d'horizon

Borrowed from French tour d'horizon.

Questions about tour d'horizon

What does tour d'horizon mean?
Tour d'horizon means an extensive tour; figuratively, a wide-ranging or general survey.
How do you use tour d'horizon in a sentence?
A tour d'horizon of the Western Hemisphere showed slavery confined to the American South, Brazil, and Cuba.
What part of speech is tour d'horizon?
Tour d'horizon is a noun.
How do you pronounce tour d'horizon?
Tour d'horizon is pronounced /ˈtʊə(ɹ)ˌdɒɹɪˈzɒn/.
What is the plural of tour d'horizon?
The plural of tour d'horizon is tours d'horizon.

Words near tour d'horizon in the dictionary

  1. Tour & Taxis
  2. Tour and Taxis
  3. tour bus
  4. tour buses
  5. tour busses
  6. tour d'horizon
  7. tour de force
  8. Tour de France
  9. tour group
  10. tour groups
  11. tour guide

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tour d'horizon (page history and authors). 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.

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Cite this entry: “tour d'horizon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tour_d%27horizon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.