Tourn

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for a medieval tournament or mock combat between knights ; a periodic court held by a sheriff to review local law and order in a district
2. A dated word for a jousting contest between knights ; the regular local court of a sheriff that inspected public order within a district
3. Old usage meaning a medieval knightly competition or joust ; a sheriff's routine county court that oversaw local justice and community obligations

Etymology: "Tourn" is a noun that English borrowed from Anglo-Norman, the form of French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest, and it is a doublet of "turn": two words that came into English by different routes from the same origin. The Anglo-Norman form kept a spelling and sound that the native English word gradually lost, so the pair show how one Latin-derived root could split into two distinct English words. Over time, "tourn" came to name a particular kind of event rather than a simple movement. Its meaning centred on a periodic gathering, a circuit or round of activity, in contrast to the everyday sense of turning something around. The surviving pairing with "turn" is what makes it useful to etymologists, since it preserves an older French shape that ordinary English speech had dropped.