excursion - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Borrowed from Latin excursiō (“a running out, an inroad, invasion, a setting out, beginning of a speech”), from excurrere (“to run out”), from ex (“out”) + currere (“to run”). By surface analysis, excurse +‎ -ion. Compare excursus.

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.
    • 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 2, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:
      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. (Australia) A field trip.
  3. A wandering from the main subject: a digression.
    • 1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
      Now all his ponderings, however excursive, wheeled round Isabel as their center; and back to her they came again from every excursion; and again derived some new, small germs for wonderment.
  4. (aviation) An occurrence where an aircraft runs off the end or side of a runway or taxiway, usually during takeoff, landing, or taxi.
  5. (phonetics) A deviation in pitch, for example in the syllables of enthusiastic speech.
  6. Temporary deviation from a regular course or pattern
    After an unsuccessful excursion into banking, I've returned to public life.

brief recreational trip

wandering from the main subject

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, [1]
      Yesterday I excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write a few letters.
    • 1880, Mark Twain, chapter 49, in A Tramp Abroad‎[2]:
      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, “Ways of Getting Round”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:
      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.

Borrowed from Latin excursiōnem.

excursion f (plural excursions)

  1. excursion
  2. wander (talk off topic)