Xrthnty

English

Noun

bourne (countable and uncountable, plural bournes)

1. 
   (countable, archaic) A boundary.
   
   • 
     c. 1599–1602, Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, act 3, scene 1:

     But that the dread of something after death, / The undiscover'd country from whose bourn[e] / No traveller returns

   
   
   • 
     1879, Stevenson, Robert Louis, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes:

     […]and though 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.

   
   
   • 
     1889, Tennyson, Alfred, Crossing the Bar:

     For though from out our bourne of Time and Place,
     The flood may bear me far,
     I hope to see my Pilot face to face
     When I have crossed the bar.

   
   


2. 
   (archaic) A goal or destination.


3. 
   (countable) A stream or brook in which water flows only seasonally.

Derived terms

• 
  (seasonal stream): nailbourne, winterbourne
  

Related terms

• 
  (seasonal stream): bourn (“small stream”), burn (“stream”)
  

Anagrams

• 
  unbore, unrobe