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Definition of tour

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Definition of tour  (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

intransitive verb

  • peregrinate

Examples of tour in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tour.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French tur, tourn turning, circuit, journey — more at turn

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2b

1708, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense

Phrases Containing tour

  • Cook's tour
  • tour de force
  • package tour
  • tour of inspection

Dictionary Entries Near tour

Cite this entry.

“Tour.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tour. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of tour.

Kids Definition of tour  (Entry 2 of 2)

More from Merriam-Webster on tour

Nglish: Translation of tour for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of tour for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about tour

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  • 1.1 Pronunciation
  • 1.2.1.1 Hyponyms
  • 1.2.1.2 Derived terms
  • 1.2.1.3 Related terms
  • 1.2.1.4 Translations
  • 1.2.2.1 Translations
  • 1.4.2 References
  • 1.5 Anagrams
  • 3.1 Etymology
  • 3.2 Pronunciation
  • 3.3.1 Synonyms
  • 4.1 Pronunciation
  • 4.2.1.1 Derived terms
  • 4.2.1.2 Descendants
  • 4.3.1.1 Derived terms
  • 4.3.1.2 Descendants
  • 4.4.1.1 Derived terms
  • 4.5 See also
  • 4.6 Further reading
  • 4.7 Anagrams
  • 5.1 Alternative forms
  • 5.2 Etymology
  • 5.3 Pronunciation
  • 5.4.1 Descendants
  • 5.4.2 References
  • 6.1 Pronunciation
  • 7.1 Pronunciation
  • 7.3.1 Alternative forms
  • 8.1 Etymology
  • 8.2 Pronunciation
  • 8.3.1 Derived terms
  • 8.4 Further reading
  • 9.1.1 Declension
  • 9.2 References

English [ edit ]

Pronunciation [ edit ].

  • IPA ( key ) : /tɔː(ɹ)/ , /tʊə(ɹ)/ , /tɝ/ , /tuːɹ/
  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ) , -ʊə(ɹ)
  • Homophone : tore ( pour-poor merger )

Etymology 1 [ edit ]

From Old French tour , tourn , from the verb torner , tourner .

Noun [ edit ]

tour ( plural tours )

  • A journey through a particular building, estate, country, etc. On our last holiday to Spain we took a tour of the wine-growing regions.
  • A guided visit to a particular place, or virtual place. On the company's website, you can take a virtual tour of the headquarters.
  • A journey through a given list of places, such as by an entertainer performing concerts . Metallica's tour of Europe
  • ( sports , chiefly cricket and rugby ) A trip taken to another country in which several matches are played.
  • ( sports , cycling ) A street and road race , frequently multiday.
  • ( sports ) A set of competitions which make up a championship .
  • 2022 September 21, Carly Olson, Dan Bilefsky, “Ten prisoners, including Americans, have been released as part of a Russia-Ukraine exchange, Saudi Arabia says.”, in The New York Times ‎ [1] , →ISSN : Among those released were two Americans who had been held captive for more than three months: Alex Drueke, a former U.S. Army staff sergeant who served two tours in Iraq, according to his aunt, Dianna Shaw; [ … ]
  • ( graph theory ) A closed trail .
  • 1667 , John Milton , “Book X”, in Paradise Lost.   [ … ] , London: [ … ] [ Samuel Simmons ],   [ … ] , →OCLC ; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books:   [ … ] , London: Basil Montagu Pickering   [ … ] , 1873 , →OCLC : The Bird of Jove, stoopt from his aerie tour ,
  • 1712 , Richard Blackmore , Creation : It [blood] onward springs, and makes the wondrous tour
  • ( snooker ) A circuit of snooker tournaments

Hyponyms [ edit ]

  • guided tour
  • tour de force
  • tour d'horizon
  • whirlwind tour

Derived terms [ edit ]

  • abortion tour
  • Cook's tour
  • fifty-cent tour
  • knight's tour
  • mystery tour
  • nickel tour
  • package tour
  • railtour , rail tour
  • starlight tour
  • ten-cent tour
  • tour operator
  • what happens on tour stays on tour
  • whistlestop tour

Related terms [ edit ]

Translations [ edit ], verb [ edit ].

tour ( third-person singular simple present tours , present participle touring , simple past and past participle toured )

  • ( intransitive ) To make a journey The Rolling Stones were still touring when they were in their seventies.
  • ( transitive ) To make a circuit of a place The circuses have been touring Europe for the last few weeks.

Etymology 2 [ edit ]

Old French tor , French tour ( “ tower ” )

  • ( dated ) A tower .

Etymology 3 [ edit ]

  • ( obsolete ) To toot a horn .

References [ edit ]

  • “ tour ”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary , Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam , 1913, →OCLC .

Anagrams [ edit ]

  • rout , trou

Breton [ edit ]

  • Hard mutation of dour .

Dutch [ edit ]

Etymology [ edit ].

Borrowed from French tour .

tour   m ( plural tours , diminutive tourtje   n )

Synonyms [ edit ]

French [ edit ].

  • IPA ( key ) : /tuʁ/
  • Rhymes: -uʁ

Inherited from Old French tor , from Latin turrem , from Ancient Greek τύρρις ( túrrhis ) , τύρσις ( túrsis ) .

tour   f ( plural tours )

  • tower La tour de Pise est penchée. ― The Tower of Pisa is leaning.
  • ( chess ) rook
  • apartment building
  • tour de Babel
  • tour de contrôle
  • tour de forage
  • tour de guet
  • tour de siège
  • tour d’ivoire
  • tour Eiffel

See also [ edit ]

Further reading [ edit ].

  • “ tour ”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [ Digitized Treasury of the French Language ] , 2012.
  • “ tour ” in Dictionnaire français en ligne Larousse .

Middle English [ edit ]

Alternative forms [ edit ].

  • thour , tor , tore , toure , towere , towour , tur

From Old English tūr , tor , torr , from Latin turris .

  • IPA ( key ) : /tuːr/

tour ( plural toures )

  • English: tower ( see there for further descendants )
  • Scots: tour , towr
  • Yola: toweare
  • “ tǒur, n. (1) ”, in MED Online , Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan , 2007.

Portuguese [ edit ]

  • ( Brazil ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈtuʁ/ [ˈtuh]
  • ( São Paulo ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈtuɾ/
  • ( Rio de Janeiro ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈtuʁ/ [ˈtuχ]
  • ( Southern Brazil ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈtuɻ/
  • ( Portugal ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈtuɾ/
  • ( Southern Portugal ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈtu.ɾi/
  • tour ( guided visit )
  • tour ( journey through a given list of places )

Scots [ edit ]

  • IPA ( key ) : /tur/

Spanish [ edit ]

  • IPA ( key ) : /ˈtuɾ/ [ˈt̪uɾ]
  • Rhymes: -uɾ
  • tour , guided visit to a country, museum, etc. Synonyms: viaje , visita , excursión
  • ( sports ) tour , a trip to another country to play matches
  • ( music ) tour , a trip to other countries undertaken by a singer or musician Synonym: gira
  • Tour de Francia
  • “ tour ”, in Diccionario de la lengua española , Vigésima tercera edición , Real Academia Española, 2014

Swedish [ edit ]

tour   c

  • ( sports ) a tour (chiefly in individual ball games)

Declension [ edit ]

  • tour in Svensk ordbok ( SO )
  • tour in Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL )
  • tour in Svenska Akademiens ordbok ( SAOB )

tour is it a verb

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What does the verb tour mean?

There are seven meanings listed in OED's entry for the verb tour , two of which are labelled obsolete. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

tour has developed meanings and uses in subjects including

Entry status

OED is undergoing a continuous programme of revision to modernize and improve definitions. This entry has not yet been fully revised.

How common is the verb tour ?

How is the verb tour pronounced, british english, u.s. english, where does the verb tour come from.

Earliest known use

The earliest known use of the verb tour is in the mid 1700s.

OED's earliest evidence for tour is from 1746, in the writing of Mary Delany, court favourite and artist.

It is also recorded as a noun from the Middle English period (1150—1500).

tour is formed within English, by conversion.

Etymons: tour n.

Nearby entries

  • Toulousain, n. & adj. 1883–
  • toumbe, v. 1297
  • toup, n. 1959–
  • to-up, prep. c1330–50
  • toupee, n. 1727–
  • toupeed, adj. 1847–
  • toupet, n. 1728–
  • toupeted, adj. 1903–
  • toupet-titmouse, n. 1785–
  • tour, n. c1320–
  • tour, v. 1746–
  • Tourangeau, n. & adj. 1883–
  • Tourangeois, adj. & n. 1857–
  • tourbillion | tourbillon, n. 1477–
  • tour de force, n. 1802–
  • Tour de France, n. 1922–
  • tour d'horizon, n. 1952–
  • tourelle, n. c1330–
  • tourer, n. 1927–
  • tourette, n.¹ 1881–
  • Tourette, n.² 1899–

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Meaning & use

Pronunciation, compounds & derived words, entry history for tour, v..

tour, v. was first published in 1913; not yet revised

tour, v. was last modified in December 2023

Revision of the OED is a long-term project. Entries in oed.com which have not been revised may include:

  • corrections and revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
  • new senses, phrases, and quotations which have been added in subsequent print and online updates.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into tour, v. in December 2023.

Earlier versions of tour, v. were published in:

OED First Edition (1913)

  • Find out more

OED Second Edition (1989)

  • View tour, v. in Second Edition

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Citation details

Factsheet for tour, v., browse entry.

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a traveling around from place to place.

a long journey including the visiting of a number of places in sequence, especially with an organized group led by a guide.

a brief trip through a place, as a building or a site, in order to view or inspect it: The visiting prime minister was given a tour of the chemical plant.

a journey from town to town to fulfill engagements, as by a theatrical company or an entertainer: to go on tour; a European concert tour.

a period of duty at one place or in one job.

to travel from place to place.

to travel from town to town fulfilling engagements.

to travel through (a place).

to send or take (a theatrical company, its production, etc.) from town to town.

to guide (someone) on a tour: He toured us through the chateaus of the Loire Valley.

Origin of tour

Other words for tour, other words from tour.

  • min·i·tour, noun
  • un·toured, adjective

Words Nearby tour

  • Toulouse-Lautrec
  • Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de
  • tourbillion

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use tour in a sentence

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site hosts a walking tour of Douglass’ Anacostia today at noon.

Noah Latham, a private based at Fort Drum, did a tour of Iraq as a drone operator, according to an Army spokesperson.

Hughes was scheduled to join city officials on a tour of the building two weeks later.

Plus, see how the Panda Cams are operated, take a virtual tour of the panda house and get the answers to some of your most-asked questions.

At that time, Matt Rihm and Hans Smith of Armada Skis were driving out for a ski tour in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.

Stanley Richards, Senior Vice President of the Fortune Society, gave a tour along with a few residents.

Before I go out on tour , I ask for prayer and to help my family.

They finished out the tour without incident, while newspapers across the country picked up the story.

TLC promptly pulled the plug on the hit series and Shannon embarked on a press tour denying the claims.

I was a part of this tour , debating Meyer in Richmond, Virginia in April.

The magazines sketch us a lively article, the newspapers vignette us, step by step, a royal tour .

But the traveller took a wide tour ; and did not bring the letter to its destination until two months after its date.

Your most intimate friend arrived in Paris, and you choose the next day to make a little tour !

I did not anticipate a tour of pleasure through Ireland, but the reality is more painful than I anticipated.

He explained quietly that he did not belong here, but was making a tour of the parishes of Wurttemberg and Baden.

British Dictionary definitions for tour

/ ( tʊə ) /

an extended journey, usually taken for pleasure, visiting places of interest along the route

military a period of service, esp in one place of duty

a short trip, as for inspection

a trip made by a theatre company, orchestra, etc, to perform in several different places : a concert tour

an overseas trip made by a cricket or rugby team, etc, to play in several places

to make a tour of (a place)

to perform (a show) or promote (a product) in several different places

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Tour – Definition, Meaning & Examples

Part of speech.

Tour is a verb and a noun.

  • As a verb, tour means to travel through an area or place of interest, usually for pleasure or education; to take part in a guided visit to a place or attraction.
  • As a noun, tour means a journey for pleasure or education, during which many places of interest are visited; a guided visit to a place or attraction.

Pronunciation

IPA: /tʊə(r)/ or /tʊr/

The word “tour” originated from the Old French “torner” which meant “to turn”. It was used in the sense of “turning around” or “going around” a place or region, and later came to mean a journey or trip taken for that purpose.

Some synonyms for “tour” as a noun include excursion, trip, journey, travel, trek, and voyage. Some synonyms for “tour” as a verb include travel, visit, roam, explore, and sightsee.

Some antonyms for “tour” as a noun include, stay or static while as a verb, antonyms could be remain, stop or halt

  • She took a tour of Europe and visited ten countries in twenty days.
  • We’re going on a tour of the city’s finest museums and galleries.
  • We’re planning to tour Rome and Venice.
  • They decided to tour the world for six months.
  • John plans to take a tour of Spain next summer.
  • The tour group includes people from all over the world.
  • My parents took a tour of the national parks last year, and they loved it.
  • The band is touring Europe next month.
  • We decided to tour the vineyards of California for our honeymoon.
  • She has always wanted to tour South America.

Similar Words

Some similar words for “tour” include:

Interesting Facts about the Word

  • The concept of organized tours became popular in the 19th century, as train travel became more common and people began to have more leisure time to travel.
  • The word “tour” is often used in the music industry to refer to a series of live performances by a musician or band in different cities or countries.
  • The all-girls band, The Spice Girls, had a reunion tour in 2019 after over a decade.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

  • What is the plural form of tour? The plural form of tour is tours.
  • What is the past tense of tour? The past tense of tour is toured.
  • What is the present tense of tour? The present tense of tour is tour.
  • What is the future tense of tour ? The future tense of tour is will tour.
  • Is tour a verb or a noun? Tour is both a verb and a noun.

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Definition of tour noun from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary

  • have/take a vacation/a break/a day off/a year off/time off
  • go on/be on vacation/leave/honeymoon/safari/sabbatical/a trip/a tour/a cruise/a pilgrimage
  • go backpacking/camping/sightseeing
  • plan a trip/a vacation/your itinerary
  • reserve a hotel room/a flight/tickets
  • have/make/cancel a reservation
  • rent a condo/a vacation home/a cabin
  • rent a car/bicycle/moped/scooter/Jet Ski
  • stay in a hotel/a bed and breakfast/a youth hostel/a villa/a trailer/a vacation home/a resort/a timeshare
  • cost/charge $100 a/per night for a suite/a single/double/twin room
  • check into/out of a hotel/a motel/your room
  • pack/unpack your suitcase/bags
  • call/order room service
  • cancel/cut short a trip/vacation
  • apply for/get/renew a/your passport
  • take out/buy/get travel insurance
  • catch/miss your plane/train/ferry/connecting flight
  • fly (in)/travel (in) first/business/economy class
  • make/have a brief/two-day/twelve-hour layover/stopover in Hong Kong
  • experience/cause/lead to delays
  • check (in)/collect/get/lose your baggage/luggage
  • be charged for/pay excess baggage fees
  • board/get on/leave/get off the aircraft/plane/ship/ferry
  • taxi down/leave/approach/hit/overshoot the runway
  • experience/hit/encounter (mild/severe) turbulence
  • suffer from/recover from/get over your jet lag/motion sickness
  • be seasick/carsick
  • attract/draw/bring tourists/visitors
  • encourage/promote/hurt tourism
  • promote/develop ecotourism
  • build/develop/visit a tourist/tropical/beach/ski resort
  • work for/be operated by a major hotel chain
  • be served by/compete with low-fare/low-cost/budget airlines
  • use/go to/have a travel agent
  • contact/check with your travel agent/tour operator
  • buy/be on/go on a package deal/vacation/tour
  • buy/bring back (tacky/overpriced) souvenirs
  • trip an act of traveling from one place to another, and usually back again: a business trip a five-minute trip by taxi
  • journey an act of traveling from one place to another, especially when they are far apart: a long and difficult journey across the mountains
  • A trip usually involves you going to a place and back again; a journey is usually one-way. A trip is often shorter than a journey , although it does not have to be: a trip to New York a round-the-world trip. It is often short in time, even if it is long in distance. Journey is more often used when the traveling takes a long time and is difficult.
  • tour a journey made for pleasure during which several different places are visited: a tour of California
  • commute the regular trip that a person makes when they travel to work and back home again: a two-hour commute into downtown Washington
  • expedition an organized journey with a particular purpose, especially to find out about a place that is not well known: the first expedition to the South Pole
  • excursion a short trip made for pleasure, especially one that has been organized for a group of people: We went on an all-day excursion to the island.
  • outing a short trip made for pleasure or education, usually with a group of people and lasting no more than a day: My project team organized an afternoon outing to celebrate.
  • an overseas trip/journey/tour/expedition
  • a bus/train trip/journey/tour
  • to go on a(n) trip/journey/tour/expedition/excursion/outing
  • to set out/off on a(n) trip/journey/tour/expedition/excursion
  • to take a(n) trip/journey/expedition/excursion

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  • 3 an official series of visits made to different places by a sports team, an orchestra , an important person, etc. The band is currently on a nine-day tour of France. The band is on tour in France. a concert tour The Prince will visit Boston on the last leg (= part) of his American tour. The soldiers will do a six-month tour of duty in the Mideast.

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All ENGLISH words that begin with 'T'

Past Tenses

Tour Past Tense

toured past tense of tour is toured.

Tour verb forms

Conjugation of tour.

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Definition of tour – Learner’s Dictionary

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  • The tour offers a chance to visit places of interest .
  • Despite the accident , she intends to complete her tour as originally planned .
  • The band's American tour coincided with the release of their second album .
  • They went on a sightseeing tour of London.
  • The tour guide was very informative .

(Definition of tour from the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

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Here are the past tense forms of the verb tour

👉 Forms of verb tour in future and past simple and past participle. ❓ What is the past tense of tour.

Tour: Past, Present, and Participle Forms

What are the 2nd and 3rd forms of the verb tour.

🎓 What are the past simple, future simple, present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect forms of the base form (infinitive) ' tour '? 👉 It's quite simple -->

Learn the three forms of the English verb 'tour'

  • the first form (V1) is 'tour' used in present simple and future simple tenses.
  • the second form (V2) is 'Toured' used in past simple tense.
  • the third form (V3) is 'Toured' used in present perfect and past perfect tenses.

What are the past tense and past participle of tour?

What is the past tense of tour.

The past tense of the verb "tour" is "Toured", and the past participle is "Toured".

Verb Tenses

Past simple — tour in past simple Toured (V2) . Future simple — tour in future simple is tour (will + V1) . Present Perfect — tour in present perfect tense is Toured (have/has + V3) . Past Perfect — tour in past perfect tense is Toured (had + V3) .

tour regular or irregular verb?

👉 Is 'tour' a regular or irregular verb? The verb 'tour' is regular verb .

Examples of Verb tour in Sentences

  •   We are going to tour your rooms (Present Simple)
  •   Some members toured refugee camp on the west coast (Past Simple)
  •   For several seasons an Italian opera toured the city. (Past Simple)
  •   Because there's a circus touring nearby, and they say there's a Negro in it. (Present Simple)
  •   She was a member of the Diaghilev Academy, and then toured the world with her own troupe, appearing in major roles in the classical repertoire. (Past Simple)
  •   She still had one faint hope that they would meet a forester, but forester's have to tour a huge area, inspect hiking trails, monitor the condition of the forest. (Past Simple)
  •   He moved his horse, slowly touring the city like a shark circling its prey. The defenders, clashing and bickering, followed on their side of the wall. (Past Simple)
  •   If we consider the motives that motivate tourists to tour, there may be quite a few goals. (Present Simple)
  •   I often think that it would be nice to tour through time to meet myself, young and full of doubts and worries, and to tell myself that my dreams are not in vain and that adversities are transient. (Present Simple)
  •   This unexpected news only strengthened my desire to hunt flamingos. I immediately expressed my determination to tour to the pirate island. (Past Simple)

Along with tour, words are popular progress and concern .

Verbs by letter: r , d , u , c , m , p , b , w , h , a , e , g , s , q , j , l , t , f , o , n , k , i , v , y , z .

English verbs

  • 318 Irregular verbs
  • 904 Regular verbs
  • 5 Modal verbs
  • 407 Phrasal verb

Online verb dictionary

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tour is it a verb

22 of the Funniest Novels Since ‘Catch-22’

Because we could all use a laugh.

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By Dwight Garner ,  Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai

Illustrations by Cari Vander Yacht

  • March 14, 2024

When it comes to fiction, humor is serious business. If tragedy appeals to the emotions, wit appeals to the mind. “You have to know where the funny is,” the writer Sheila Heti says, “and if you know where the funny is, you know everything.” Humor is a bulwark against complacency and conformity, mediocrity and predictability.

With all this in mind, we’ve put together a list of 22 of the funniest novels written in English since Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” (1961). That book presented a voice that was fresh, liberated, angry and also funny — about something American novels hadn’t been funny about before: war. Set during World War II and featuring Capt. John Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier, the novel presaged, in its black humor, its outraged intelligence, its blend of tragedy and farce, and its awareness of the corrupt values that got us into Vietnam, not just Bob Dylan but the counterculture writ large.

Heller gave writers permission to be irreverent about the most serious stuff — the stuff of life and death. The Czech novelist Milan Kundera, who went into exile in France after satirizing his country’s Communist regime, told Philip Roth: “I could always recognize a person who was not a Stalinist, a person whom I needn’t fear, by the way he smiled. A sense of humor was a trustworthy sign of recognition. Ever since, I have been terrified by a world that is losing its sense of humor.”

It’s in the spirit of warding off that dire scenario that we offer this list: a resolutely idiosyncratic assemblage of novels — 22 in all, get it? — culled from the past six decades by three very different Times book critics.

Here, you will not find books stuffed with jokes. For the most part, our picks will not induce knee slapping. (“Any man who will not resist a pun will not lie up-pun me,” the great Eve Babitz wrote.) The humor these authors embrace traverses the gamut, from sardonic to screwball, mordant to madcap, droll to deranged. Writing in Heller’s shadow, but in an idiom all their own, these novelists apply his satirical tool kit — along with their own screwdrivers and shivs — to whole other categories of human experience, from race and gender to dating, aging, office cubicles and book publishing itself. The critic Albert Murray understood that wit is power, and that knowing where the funny is takes us closer to the nub of things. Best of all, it’s available to anyone. As Murray wrote, “It is always open season on the truth.”

Scathing Satire

‘ The Wig ,’ by Charles Wright (1966)

The book "The Wig" on a blue background with cartoon eyeballs gazing at it from the corner.

Charles Wright is not a name on many people’s radar. Indeed, he is often confused with the Tennessee-born poet of the same name . But his potent novels deserve a resurgence. Wright wrote three between 1963 and 1973: “The Messenger,” “The Wig” and “Absolutely Nothing to Get Excited About.” Each is about a young and sensitive Black veteran of the Korean War who may or may not wish to become a writer and is trying to find a foothold in New York City. All are worth reading, but the prize is “The Wig.” Wright’s hero senses he needs a gimmick to succeed in the white world, and he decides, with the help of a jar of hair relaxer, to create a luminous mane that comes to be known as “the wig.” His hair is so resplendent, and later so vividly red, that he wonders: “Would Time magazine review this phenomenon under Medicine, Milestones, The Nation, Art, Show Business or U.S. Business?” The hair takes his narrator only so far. But Wright’s analysis of racial politics in America is an electric pleasure. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: Chris Rock’s documentary “ Good Hair, ” struggling writers, Bob Kaufman’s poetry , the films of Charles Burnett , restaurant mascots, Eddie Murphy’s “S.N.L.” skit “ White Like Me .”

Talky and Paranoid

‘ Portnoy’s Complaint ,’ by Philip Roth (1969)

Upon its publication in 1969, Roth’s novel caused 100,000 Jewish mothers to plotz. The book is one long, vivid monologue from a lust-ridden young New Jersey man named Alexander Portnoy, as delivered to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Spielvogel. Alexander has mother issues. Mrs. Portnoy worries about everything, including the health of his two primary orifices. (“Alex, I don’t want you to flush the toilet,” she cries. “I want to see what you’ve done in there.”) This novel made headlines for its graphic scenes of self-pleasuring; Alexander makes use of a cored-out apple, an empty milk bottle and (infamously) a piece of liver bound for his family’s dinner table. Beneath the antic comedy is a sophisticated coming-of-age novel that digs deeply not only into sex but into issues of assimilation and social class. It was the firecracker that augured a great career, and it still delivers a bang. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Shiva Baby ,” Lil Dicky, psychotherapy, “ Curb Your Enthusiasm ,” the fiction of Joshua Cohen , liver cutlets, mom tattoos.

Earthy and Exasperated

‘ Oreo ,’ by Fran Ross (1974)

Ross’s “Oreo,” her first and only novel, was published in 1974 and sank with barely a trace. Frustrated, Ross abandoned fiction to write for Richard Pryor. It’s time for the culture to catch up to “Oreo.” It’s about a young woman, half-Black, half-Jewish, on a quest to find her absent father, and the sexy humor flies freely from the first pages. Ross delights in language, mixing Yiddish with Black vernacular and turning words like “friedan” (as in Betty) and “kuklux” into verbs. In an introduction to a 2015 reissue, the novelist Danzy Senna got at why this book continues to resonate: “‘Oreo’ resists the unwritten conventions that still exist for novels written by Black women today. There’s nothing redemptively uplifting about her work. The title doesn’t refer to the Bible or the blues. The work does not refer to slavery. The character is never violated, sexually or otherwise.” Ross’s book is also among the great, joyful American food novels. One woman cooks so well that people are driven, quite literally, out of their minds. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: Pam Grier movies, Zabar’s, Edna Lewis’s cookbooks , Richard Pryor.

Humane and Bittersweet

‘ Tales of the City ,’ by Armistead Maupin (1978)

Maupin’s series of novels about San Francisco life begins in 1978 with “Tales of the City.” You can dip into these warm, accessible, heavily peopled and sweet-and-sour novels almost anywhere, but for the purposes of this list we’re going to stick with the first three, which have been collected under the title “28 Barbary Lane.” The address is that of a large house, presided over by a pot-growing, free-spirited landlady, and occupied by diverse residents, gay, straight and otherwise. Has any other American writer loved his city so much and so well? San Francisco, under Maupin’s gaze, becomes the setting for an elaborate comedy of manners, and the early novels were among the first mainstream works to put queer and straight characters on equal footing. Maupin’s men and women came here to find themselves, and to find others like them. That they so often succeed makes these novels glow in your hands. “This city,” one character says, “loosens people up.” Maupin’s novels are shaggy in spirit but shrewd in their observations. His prose brightens existence, and clarifies the things that matter. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: Sourdough bread, reruns of “Friends” and “Will & Grace,” David Sedaris, the documentary “ The Times of Harvey Milk .”

Damp, Tender, Weird

‘ Mrs. Caliban ,’ by Rachel Ingalls (1982)

tour is it a verb

Dorothy, a lonely housewife, falls in love with Larry, a giant sea creature who is open-minded and curious, eager to learn what he can about her and her world. Unlike Dorothy’s inattentive, philandering husband, Larry can tell she’s a marvel. Watching her closely as she clears up after breakfast, he asks if the “dress” she’s wearing — a nightgown and a bathrobe — is “a garment of celebration.” The premise might be over the top, but the comedy is gentle: a (literal!) fish-out-of-water tale tempered by suburban sadness. Before meeting Larry, Dorothy lost a son; she also had a miscarriage. She imagines having a baby with her merman beau. A half-monster? Maybe. But also: “Born on American soil to an American mother — such a child could become president.” — JS

READ IF YOU LIKE: The novels of Richard Yates , Daryl Hannah in “Splash ,” herpetology, Guillermo del Toro’s film “ The Shape of Water .”

Cheery and Laden with Double Entendre

‘ The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ ,’ by Sue Townsend (1982)

You can write from the point of view of an adolescent boy very earnestly and sincerely, as Judy Blume does in “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t” — or you can hover over the young fella with a wink, as Townsend does in this book that started a national franchise (with Mole eventually aging to “the prostrate years” of 39¼). Adrian is an only child in Thatcher-era England with working-class parents who are not getting along: His father drinks; his mother is discovering feminism. He has pimples, wet dreams, a paper route, an elderly friend and a huge crush on a classmate named Pandora. Convinced he is an intellectual, with an impressive reading list, he submits poems to the BBC. He maybe uses the word “dead” a wee bit much, but his naïve observations of complicated adult affairs in brief journal entries are pure life. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: Mike Leigh movies , “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “ Fawlty Towers .”

Observational, Rat-a-tat, Second-Wave Feminist

‘ Heartburn ,’ by Nora Ephron (1983)

tour is it a verb

Lemonade. You won’t find a recipe for it in Ephron’s novel (though there are excellent ones for sorrel soup and Lillian Hellman’s pot roast), but it’s what she made of her lemon of a marriage to the Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein with this short but perfectly tart roman à clef that set tongues flapping and booksellers’ cash registers a-chinging. Ephron had been a successful journalist herself; her only novel — at under 200 pages, really more of a novella — was a sort of palate cleanser before she made her name in Hollywood. And she brought her full show-business instincts to the character of Rachel Samstat (was that a play on samizdat ?): a pregnant cookbook writer who attends group therapy, shops at Bloomingdale’s and flies the Eastern shuttle (R.I.P.). With the rat-a-tat pace of 1940s screwball comedies and one-liners flying like fake fur, “Heartburn” is the quintessence of getting the last laugh. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: Shiv and Tom’s marriage in “ Succession ,” Stanley Tucci’s memoir “ Taste ,” Laurie Colwin.

Dazzling and Cruel

‘ Money: A Suicide Note ,’ by Martin Amis (1984)

“Money” represents Amis, son of funny dad Kingsley, at the peak of his early Mick Jaggery powers, drawing from his experience working on the screenplay for the Stanley Donen sci-fi bomb “Saturn 3.” The novel — “novels … they’re all long, aren’t they. I mean they’re all so long ” is one of many arch lines — burrows into the debauched transcontinental life of one John Self, an ad man with base appetites and offensive thoughts who drives a Fiasco sports car and is making his first feature film, or so he thinks. Supporting characters include Lorne Guyland (get it?), an actor based on Kirk Douglas; Selina Street, Self’s unfaithful girlfriend; New York City in all its rich filth … and Martin Amis. “Some people will do anything to get their names in print,” the narrator notes dryly. As a messy, bitter, split-open capsule of ’80s celebrity and consumption, “Money” is priceless. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: “Othello,” Dudley Moore in “ Arthur, ” the Patrick Melrose novels , authorial intrusion.

Cerebral, Discursive

‘ The Mezzanine ,’ by Nicholson Baker (1988)

Baker is our master of the minute. The stream of consciousness in “The Mezzanine,” his first novel, is really more of a rivulet: the thoughts of an ordinary young man named Howie during a lunch hour spent contemplating the crazy variety of shampoo at a CVS (with once-glorious brands like Prell and Alberto V05 “now in sorry vassalage on the bottom shelf of Aisle 1B”); buying new shoelaces; eating lunch that includes popcorn and a carton of milk; sitting in the sun reading Aurelius’ “Meditations”; and taking a short escalator ride back to work. Digressive, deeply footnoted, listy and lyrical, this novel is a perfect postcard from a time before smartphones hijacked the imagination and “15-year cycles of journalistic excitement about one issue or another” shrank to maybe 15 months, if not minutes. It’s proof, in just under 150 pages, that the funniest things in life — peculiar and ha-ha — are those we wouldn’t dare say out loud. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Seinfeld ,” Target runs, Maurice Ravel, paper drinking straws, scene-stealing footnotes, Samuel Beckett.

Ruthless, Economical, Deeply Moral

‘ A Far Cry From Kensington ,’ by Muriel Spark (1988)

Leave it to Spark to keep a profusion of plots delightfully contained with her spare, wry style. Told from the point of view of one Mrs. Hawkins, who spends her sleepless nights looking back on her life as a young war widow and book editor in 1950s London, this slip of a novel includes, among other things, anonymous threats, a fraudulent book publisher, the pseudoscience of radionics, the metaphysics of evil, a love story and an endorsement of cats. Mrs. Hawkins is brisk, smart and plain-spoken; she gets herself into a load of trouble when she insists that a well-connected hack writer named Hector Bartlett is, as she (repeatedly and unapologetically) puts it, a “ pisseur de copie .” The epithet is this book’s reliable refrain, always good for a laugh, but Spark’s sly wit is what shimmers throughout. — JS

READ IF YOU LIKE: Mysteries, nimble adverbs, Barbara Pym , unreliable women, extreme candor.

Poker-Faced Overkill

‘ American Psycho ,’ by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

tour is it a verb

“American Psycho,” Ellis’s novel about Patrick Bateman, a young Wall Street serial killer with an education from Exeter and Harvard, set off a moral panic when it was published in 1991. Feminist groups proposed boycotts ; Ellis received death threats; his book tour was scuttled; a review in this newspaper was titled “ Snuff This Book! ” But over time — thanks in no small part to the director Mary Harron’s 2000 film adaptation — the deadpan humor and acid satire in Ellis’s novel became more apparent. Bateman, an ardent fan of Donald J. Trump, is a brazen sendup of a blank and soulless Wall Street generation. The skewering of New York City’s restaurant scene in the 1980s (eagle carpaccio, anyone?) is just one of this novel’s dark and uncommon delights. Like Tony Soprano and Walter White from “Breaking Bad,” Bateman has become a grinning all-American antihero. Who in recent literary fiction has created a more indelible villain? His blood-flecked smile contains American multitudes. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Bodies Bodies Bodies ,” mud soup and charcoal arugula, “ A Clockwork Orange ,” very nice business cards, Huey Lewis and the News, “ Stan ” by Eminem, tarps.

Cheeky, Self-Deprecating, Slapstick

‘ Bridget Jones’s Diary ,’ by Helen Fielding (1996)

Fielding’s what-the-hell sophomore novel — few remember her first, “Cause Celeb” — is a fizz-making time capsule of office flirtation before #MeToo (where else were pre-apps working people supposed to meet people?); weight anxiety before Ozempic (feminism hasn’t conquered that either); and Cool Britannia overtaking a long reign of conservatism. And lest anyone dismiss the book as repackaged fish wrap (it started as a column in The Independent newspaper) or worse (shudder, “chick lit”), let me remind you that its classic love plot is adroitly borrowed from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” with a male hero named Darcy, other characters resembling Mr. Wickham and Mrs. Bennet, and keen observation of English manners and mores. Intertextuality, baby. Fielding gets the inner dialogue of a 30-something female Londoner raised on women’s magazines, potato crisps and telly exactly right. Reveling in life’s pleasures and acknowledging its anxieties, replete with relatable humiliations, this novel was the original bullet journal — one that actually exploded onto the best-seller list. With good reason. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Fleabag ,” “ I Hate Suzie ,” chocolate, mini-breaks.

Oddball and Mordant

‘ The Quick and the Dead ,’ by Joy Williams (2000)

“All God’s critters got a place in the choir,” to quote the Bill Staines folk song, of which this thunderous novel, set in the desert Southwest, is like a minor-key version. There is taxidermy galore; a grim nursing home where ground greyhound meat might be on the menu; a trio of motherless teenage girls — one of whom really, really dislikes cats; cactuses that take bullets. Mortality, in its messiness and surprise, splatters almost every page. A dead wife’s ghost rears up to taunt her widower for lusting after his male gardener, and nobody says boo. Indignant about ecological injustice, unblinking toward ravages to the American West and quite violent, this book will make you cry until you laugh. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE : Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” “ Eating Animals ” by Jonathan Safran Foer, “ Blazing Saddles ,” Sam Shepard.

Dark, Deadpan

‘ Then We Came to the End ,’ by Joshua Ferris (2007)

At least before the pandemic, many people spent more time at work than with their families. Like the television series “The Office,” whose American version came out around the same time as Ferris’s novel, “Then We Came to the End” explores the idea that one’s colleagues form — certainly not a family, everyone knows not to buy that idea ! — some kind of misshapen collective, with interesting dynamics. The book, which takes its title from the first line of Don DeLillo’s first novel, “ Americana ,” and relies inventively on the first-person plural, is set at an ad agency in Chicago during the dot-com bust. The specter of layoffs looms over the employees, who are anxiously competing to succeed at an impossible-seeming pro bono campaign: making people with breast cancer laugh. From Aeron chairs to emails, free food and tedious meetings, Ferris invokes the most mundane accouterments of white-collar culture for satire so dry it crackles. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Office Space ,” “ Severance ,” quiet-quitting TikToks , “ Bartleby the Scrivener .”

Wordy and Nerdy

‘ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ,’ by Junot Díaz (2007)

tour is it a verb

This book is so terribly dark, and yet light and laugh-inducing. It concerns the titular Oscar Wao, an overweight and nerdy young man — “I’m a Morlock,” he whispers, regarding himself in the mirror after a Dungeons & Dragons campaign — who desperately wants to lose his virginity. It’s also nothing less than the history of the Dominican Republic, specifically under the brutal rule of Rafael Trujillo, a.k.a. El Jefe, “the Dictatingest Dictator Who Ever Dictatored.” The ultimate joke here is the “fukú,” the name for a curse of the New World, which can explain any misfortune or tragedy (and there is tragedy aplenty in these pages). Told in freewheeling, profane Spanglish by Yunior, Oscar’s rueful roommate from Rutgers, and laced with footnotes, the novel argues for writing as the thing that unjinxes, jolting and reordering old defeatist beliefs. — AJ

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Jojo Rabbit ,” fast food, J.R.R. Tolkien, “ Akira ,” golden-age comic books, the Latin American Boom .

Fleet, Dreamlike

‘ I Am Not Sidney Poitier ,’ by Percival Everett (2009)

Everett is in the news this year because of the success of the film “ American Fiction ,” based on his darkly comic 2001 novel, “ Erasure .” That book is well worth attending to, as are many in this prolific writer’s oeuvre. But his flat-out funniest novel is “I Am Not Sidney Poitier,” from 2009. It’s about a young man, an orphan, whose name is Not Sidney Poitier. He resembles the actor, and he seems to tumble through Poitier’s entire filmography, sometimes in dream form. The effect is wild, extravagant and hysterical. One detail among many: Young Not Sidney lives for several years with Ted Turner, the CNN mogul, whose dialogue is pure bloviating inanity. He walks around asking questions like, “Can you get fat in a weightless environment?” As Not Sidney moves through the American South, contending with racist cops, Klan gatherings and a stint on a prison chain gang, the humor crackles and delivers visceral punches. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: Turner Classic Movies , media jokes, metafictional sentences like “Silence fell on the table like a bad simile,” Spike Lee films, critiques of trickle-down economics.

Willfully Perverse

‘ Lightning Rods ,’ by Helen DeWitt (2011)

Did DeWitt really go there? Oh yes, she did. Joe, her sad sack of a hero, lands on a business plan to help corporate America boost productivity and reduce sexual harassment in one fell swoop: Women employed as “lightning rods” will supply office workers with anonymous, consensual sex on demand. A specially designed wall facilitates this “innovation.” The book’s language is upbeat and can-do, while the bawdy market it depicts is utterly depraved. But DeWitt refuses to hang back, pushing her satire as far as it will go. Productivity does go up; sexual harassment does go down. Some of the lightning rods parlay the money they make into fabulous law careers. Joe has found the back door to the American dream: Make it sleazy, but also briskly efficient. — JS

READ IF YOU LIKE: Entrepreneurship, “ Secretary ,” bathroom architecture, WFH.

Fantastical, World-Weary

‘ Pym ,’ by Mat Johnson (2011)

Chris Jaynes — a Black professor who has been sacked from his teaching job for refusing to serve on the campus diversity committee — learns that the mythical island in “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,” Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel, might in fact be real. So Jaynes puts together an all-Black expedition to the South Pole, hoping to find the Black islanders from Poe’s book. What they find is Poe’s white protagonist, Arthur Pym, very much alive, his 200-year-old body and his 200-year-old racism spectacularly well preserved. They also find enormous, grunting white beings whom Pym calls “perfection incarnate.” These creatures enslave Jaynes and his crew, who must plot an escape. Riffing on an old-fashioned adventure tale, Johnson spins a satirical fantasy all his own. — JS

READ IF YOU LIKE: Antiquarian manuscripts, down parkas, MF Doom’s “ Take Me to Your Leader ,” Little Debbie snack cakes, the Abominable Snowman.

Incisive and Wild

‘ The Sellout ,’ by Paul Beatty (2015)

Beatty’s “The Sellout” might be this critic’s favorite novel published this century. It’s certainly the funniest. It’s about a young Black man, born on the outskirts of Los Angeles, who becomes a seller of artisanal watermelon and weed. (One strain is called Anglophobia.) From this cannabis seed of a plot, Beatty takes aim at the American experiment. Real blood is spilled: The narrator’s father is shot dead by police officers, basically for driving while Black. After a series of increasingly outrageous events, the narrator revives some of history’s most shameful racial injustices and ends up defending himself in front of the Supreme Court. “After a long pause,” Beatty writes, “I finally faced the bench and said, ‘Your Honor, I plead human.’” Beatty’s prose is ardent: He will put you in mind of the most esteemed Black comics of the past half-century (and of another author on this list, Charles Wright), but the humor bubbles up organically from his own literary sensibility. “Bugs Bunny,” Beatty points out, “wasn’t nothing but Br’er Rabbit with a better agent.” — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: Craft cannabis, Donald Glover, Los Angeles, the films “ Get Out ” and “ American Fiction .”

Shrewdly Realist

‘ Private Citizens ,’ by Tony Tulathimutte (2016)

tour is it a verb

Scathing, upsetting and generous all at once, this novel, about millennial friends in pre-2008-crash San Francisco, thrums with Tulathimutte’s sly intelligence and unerring comic timing. Do-gooder Cory, cynical Linda, porn-addicted Will and passive Henrik start out like sitting ducks: self-regarding, irritating, easy to lampoon. Linda can’t get past the “two-week mark” of a relationship before she starts feeling repulsed; Cory’s bookshelf includes a copy of “Atlas Shrugged,” “which she’d read just to hate it better.” The book then takes a turn, getting simultaneously darker — much darker — and lighter. The characters become weirder and friendlier. The warm flashes make the satire cut deeper: Tulathimutte loves these imperfect young humans while seeing them for who they are. — JS

READ IF YOU LIKE: Exhibitionism, eavesdropping, David Foster Wallace, “ The Big Chill .”

Glitter and Squalor

‘ My Year of Rest and Relaxation ,’ by Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)

Moshfegh writes with a misanthropic aplomb that spills over into acid comedy. “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” set in the year or so before 9/11, is about a young woman who becomes joyfully addicted to antidepressants and other meds, and to the sleep that results. Like Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov, she finds it hard to get out of bed. A practiced lotus-eater, she finds a drug that will help her realize her ambition to sleep nearly all the time. One problem: She begins to sleepwalk. (Once, she wakens to find that she has gone out and had her pubic hair waxed.) Moshfegh tugs at the political ramifications of her story; the impulse to sleep through a troubled period of history is not uncommon. Vastly more uncommon are the probity and wit she extracts from this dream of a story. — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: “ Chaise Longue ” by Wet Leg, Trazodone, Fran Lebowitz, clean sheets, Aubrey Plaza.

Profane and Surreal

‘ Lake of Urine: A Love Story ,’ by Guillermo Stitch (2020)

Fans of offbeat writers such as Flann O’Brien, Stella Gibbons and J.P. Donleavy, and admirers of the off-color puns in “Finnegans Wake,” here is a book for you. Stitch’s “Lake of Urine” is a strange, warty, high-flying satire about love, lust and demented varieties of female empowerment. More specifically, it’s about Urine and Noranbole Wakeling, sisters around whom young men lurk. Urine is sensitive and lovely — and of gladiatorial disposition. Woe to men who aim to woo her. One arrives for a date to find that she has erected a huge wicker structure on a hilltop spelling out his name alongside an obscenity. Then she sets it, and his effigy, alight. We learn about “the time she garroted Timothy Spencer’s pony because he had been sitting on it when he had glanced at the hem of her frock.” This novel appears to be set in the distant past, yet characters have USB ports. Urine winds up running an international conglomerate with an exorcist on the board of directors. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book quite like this. Every character who wanders through it is, to use Primo Levi’s words, “as disheveled and bristly as a cat returning from a rooftop jamboree.” — DG

READ IF YOU LIKE: Mud, Emma Stone in “ Poor Things ,” anecdotes about pickles, Monty Python, the droll music of David Berman .

Special thanks to Heritage Auctions.

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IMAGES

  1. Tour Verb Forms

    tour is it a verb

  2. Tour Past Tense: Verb Forms, Conjugate TOUR

    tour is it a verb

  3. Tour Past Tense: Verb Forms, Conjugate TOUR

    tour is it a verb

  4. "tour" as a noun and as a verb (examples)

    tour is it a verb

  5. Conjugation Tour 🔸 Verb in all tenses and forms

    tour is it a verb

  6. Tour Past Tense: Verb Forms, Conjugate TOUR

    tour is it a verb

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  1. Zagreb Croatia drive early morning

COMMENTS

  1. Tour Definition & Meaning

    tour: [noun] a series of professional tournaments (as in golf or tennis). a brief turn : round.

  2. TOUR

    TOUR definition: 1. a visit to a place or area, especially one during which you look around the place or area and…. Learn more.

  3. tour verb

    Definition of tour verb in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

  4. TOUR definition and meaning

    7 meanings: 1. an extended journey, usually taken for pleasure, visiting places of interest along the route 2. military a.... Click for more definitions.

  5. tour

    Verb [edit] tour (third-person singular simple present tours, present participle touring, simple past and past participle toured) (intransitive) To make a journey. The Rolling Stones were still touring when they were in their seventies. To make a circuit of a place

  6. TOUR

    TOUR meaning: 1. a visit to a place or area, especially one during which you look around the place or area and…. Learn more.

  7. tour, v. meanings, etymology and more

    The earliest known use of the verb tour is in the mid 1700s. OED's earliest evidence for tour is from 1746, in the writing of Mary Delany, court favourite and artist. It is also recorded as a noun from the Middle English period (1150—1500). tour is formed within English, by conversion.

  8. TOUR Definition & Usage Examples

    Tour definition: . See examples of TOUR used in a sentence.

  9. Tour

    Tour is a verb and a noun. Meaning. As a verb, tour means to travel through an area or place of interest, usually for pleasure or education; to take part in a guided visit to a place or attraction.

  10. TOUR

    TOUR definition: 1. a visit to and around a place, area, or country: 2. to travel around a place for pleasure: . Learn more.

  11. Travel vs Tour: Which Should You Use In Writing?

    Tour As A Verb. When "tour" is used as a verb, it can refer to the act of traveling to different places, in which case it can be used interchangeably with "travel". For example: We toured/traveled around Italy for two weeks. He loves to tour/travel the country on his motorcycle. 3. Colloquial Usage

  12. tour

    • A large, blue twin-engine air boat that normally is used for tours of the Everglades serves as the major on-site platform. tour of • a four-month tour of South America Related topics: Tourism tour tour 2 verb 1 [intransitive, transitive] DLT TRAVEL to visit several parts of a country or area We're touring the Greek islands this summer ...

  13. tour noun

    Synonyms trip trip journey tour expedition excursion outing day out These are all words for an act of travelling to a place. trip an act of travelling from one place to another, and usually back again:. a business trip; a five-minute trip by taxi; journey an act of travelling from one place to another, especially when they are a long way apart:. a long and difficult journey across the mountains

  14. tour noun

    1 tour (of/round/around something) a journey made for pleasure during which several different towns, countries, etc. are visited a walking/sightseeing, etc. tour a bus tour of northern California a tour operator (= a person or company that organizes tours) Topic Collocations Travel and Tourism vacations. have/take a vacation/a break/a day off/a year off/time off

  15. How To Use "Tour" In A Sentence: Unpacking the Word

    In its simplest form, "tour" is a noun that refers to a journey or trip taken for pleasure, education, or entertainment. For example, you might say, "I went on a tour of Europe last summer.". However, "tour" can also be used as a verb, meaning to travel around or visit different places.

  16. TOUR conjugation table

    TOUR conjugation table | Collins English Verbs. TRANSLATOR. LANGUAGE. GAMES. SCHOOLS. BLOG. RESOURCES. More . English Conjugations. English Conjugations. English. English Dictionary. English Thesaurus. English Word Lists. ... I will tour you will tour he/she/it will tour we will tour you will tour they will tour. Future Continuous

  17. Tour Past Tense: Conjugation in Present, Past & Past Participle Tense

    He/She/It will/shall have been touring. I will/shall have been touring. You/We/They will/shall have been touring. This is a reference page for tour verb forms in present, past and participle tenses. Find conjugation of tour. Check past tense of tour here.

  18. Tour Definition & Meaning

    a : a journey through the different parts of a country, region, etc. We went on a tour of Italy. They went on a driving tour of New England. a sightseeing tour. We hired a tour guide. [=a person who takes people on trips through an area and explains the interesting details about it] b : an activity in which you go through a place (such as a ...

  19. Conjugation of tour

    past perfect; I: had been touring: you: had been touring: he, she, it: had been touring: we: had been touring: you: had been touring: they: had been touring

  20. TOUR

    TOUR meaning: 1. a visit to and around a place, area, or country: 2. to travel around a place for pleasure: . Learn more.

  21. Tour Past Tense and Past Participle Verb Forms in English

    Learn the three forms of the English verb 'tour'. the first form (V1) is 'tour' used in present simple and future simple tenses. the second form (V2) is 'Toured' used in past simple tense. the third form (V3) is 'Toured' used in present perfect and past perfect tenses.

  22. Tour vs Tours

    From (etyl) tour, tourn, from the verb torner, tourner. Noun A journey through a particular building, estate, country, etc. A guided visit to a particular place, or virtual place. A journey through a given list of places, such as by an entertainer performing concerts. A trip taken to another country in which several matches are played. ...

  23. 22 of the Funniest Novels

    When it comes to fiction, humor is serious business. If tragedy appeals to the emotions, wit appeals to the mind. "You have to know where the funny is," the writer Sheila Heti says, "and if ...