excursion

Borrowed from Latin excursio (“a running out, an inroad, invasion, a setting out, beginning of a speech”), from excurrere (“to run out”), from ex (“out”) + currere (“to run”).

• IPA^(key): /ɛks.kɜː(ɹ).ʃən/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɪks.kɜːɹ.ʒən/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ʃən

excursion (plural excursions)

1. A brief recreational trip; a journey out of the usual way.

   While driving home I took an excursion and saw some deer.

   • 1922, Ben Travers, chapter 2, in A Cuckoo in the Nest‎:

     Mother […] considered that the exclusiveness of Peter's circle was due not to its distinction, but to the fact that it was an inner Babylon of prodigality and whoredom, from which every Kensingtonian held aloof, except on the conventional tip-and-run excursions in pursuit of shopping, tea and theatres.

2. A wandering from the main subject: a digression.
3. (phonetics) A deviation in pitch, for example in the syllables of enthusiastic speech.

• alarums and excursions
• excursion fare
• excursion steamer

• excursus

excursion (third-person singular simple present excursions, present participle excursioning, simple past and past participle excursioned)

1. (intransitive) To go on a recreational trip or excursion.
   • 1825, Charles Lamb, Letter to Mr. Wordsworth, 6 April, 1825, in The Works of Charles Lamb, Volume I, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851, p. 249,

     Yesterday I excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write a few letters.

   • 1880, Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, Chapter 49,

     After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides and porters […]

   • 1942, Emily Carr, The Book of Small, “Ways of Getting Round,”

     Victoria cows preferred to walk on the plank sidewalks in winter rather than dirty their hooves in the mud by the roadside. They liked to tune their chews to the tap, tap, tap of their feet on the planks. Ladies challenged the right of way by opening and shutting their umbrellas in the cows' faces and shooing, but the cows only chewed harder and stood still. It was the woman-lady, not the lady-cow who had to take to the mud and get scratched by the wild rose bushes that grew between sidewalk and fence while she excursioned round the cow.

• excursion in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• excursion in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• excursion at OneLook Dictionary Search

Borrowed from Latin excursio, excursionem.

• IPA^(key): /ɛk.skyʁ.sjɔ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

excursion f (plural excursions)

1. excursion
2. wander (talk off topic)

• “excursion” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).