Meaning of tournure | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Manner, bearing.
   countable, uncountable
2. Turn; contour; figure.
   countable, uncountable
3. Phrasing, turn of phrase.
   countable, uncountable
4. Any device used by women to expand the skirt of a dress below the waist; a bustle.
   countable, uncountable

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

“[…] the word serpentine does not express the great line which makes the elegant tournure of a statue; for nature does not permit our head, in its ordinary motions, to turn more than a fourth of the circumference either to the right or to the left.”

“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.”

CEFR level