Also 6–7 borne. [Early mod.Eng. borne, a. F. borne (formerly occas. bourne), app. = OF. bodne, bone, boune (see BOUND sb.1). In Eng. in Lord Berners, and in Shakespeare (seven times), then app. not till 18th c.; the modern use being due to Shakespeare, and in a large number of cases directly alluding to the passage in Hamlet. Confused in spelling with BOURN sb.1
(The history of borne in Fr. is uncertain; Littré suggests that it arose from the later bone, boune by the intercalation of r; Diez supposed a substitution of r for d in the earlier bodne; M. Paul Meyer says ‘bodne, bosne, borne is an admissible phonetic series, the more so that Pr. has a dim. bózola, and a sb. bozolar (borner, limiter).’)]
† 1. A boundary (between fields, etc.). Obs.
1523. Ld. Berners, Froiss., I. ccxii. 257. All … places, lyenge bitwene the boundes and bournes folowynge. Ibid. The foresayd boundes and bornes in the article of Calais.
1610. Shaks., Temp., II. i. 152. Borne, bound of Land, Tilth, Vineyard none. Ibid. (1611), Wint. T., I. ii. 134. One that fixes No borne ’twixt his and mine.
1731. Bailey, Borns, Limits, bounds, &c. Shakes.
1790. Cowper, Iliad, XVIII. 679. Oft as in their course They came to the field’s bourn.
2. A bound, a limit. (Approaching 3.) arch.
1606. Shaks., Ant. & Cl., I. i. 16. Ile set a bourne how farre to be belou’d.
1727. Thomson, Summer, 99. From the far bourne Of utmost Saturn.
1847. Tennyson, Princ., Concl. 100. A shout … rang Beyond the bourn of sunset.
1858. Sears, Athan., III. vii. 312. A sphere above the natural, and within the bourn of immortality.
3. The limit or terminus of a race, journey or course; the ultimate point aimed at, or to which anything tends; destination, goal. (Somewhat poetic: often fig.)
[Shakespeare’s famous passage probably meant the ‘frontier or pale’ of a country; but has been associated contextually with the goal of a traveller’s course.]
[1602. Shaks., Ham., III. i. 79. The dread of something after death, The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No Traueller returnes.
a. 1761. Fawkes, Sparrow, 21 (R.). Dismal regions! from whose bourn No pale travellers return.]
c. 1800. K. White, On Prayer, in Rem. (1839), 433. The means employed to arrive at the bourn of our desires.
1805. Wordsw., Prel., II. (1850), 35. The selected bourne Was now an Island.
1865. M. Arnold, Ess. Crit., vi. (1865), 212. Perhaps, even of the life of Pindar’s time, Pompeii was the inevitable bourne.
¶ 3. incorrectly for: Realm, domain. [A misunderstanding of the passage in Hamlet.] Obs.
1818. Keats, Endym., III. 31. A thousand Powers keep religious state, In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne.
1827. Praed, Poems (1865), II. 218. No dame should come To be the queen of his bourn.
4. In comb. bourne-stone (formed by Carlyle from F. borne), a boundary stone.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. I. iii. 23. Chaumette … one already descries … on bourne-stone of the thoroughfares.
1858. Kingsley, St. Maura, 56. As you preached and prayed From rock and bourne-stone.
