tournure

Noun

tournure (countable and uncountable, plural tournures)

1. Manner, bearing.
   • 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.1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter III, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 25
   • Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that she had the tournure of a princess.1879, Henry James, Daisy Miller, London: Harper & Brothers
2. Turning shape, contour; curvature of a figure or outline.
   • the tournure of the horns, which, at first sweeping backwards, gradually return so as to point forwards, with a tendency to a spiral curve.1840, Quadrupeds; or, Outlines of a popular history of the class
   • the inward tournure of the legs and anl ankle-joints, and the freedom of the hip-joint, facilitate the application of the grasping foot1847, A Sketch of the history of Monkeys
3. Phrasing, turn of phrase.
   • 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.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 246
4. (historical) Synonym of bustle: any device used by women to expand the skirt of a dress below the waist.

   Synonyms:

   bustle