course

UK/kɔːs/US/kɔɹs/

nounA16 meanings One of the most common words in English · #89 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: courses

A course is a set of lessons that belong together and take you from knowing nothing about something to knowing a bit. A ten-week Spanish course at the local college, a first-aid course on a Saturday morning, the online course you paid for and never finished.

The other big sense of course is a path. A river changes course, a plane holds its course, a ship is blown off course. A meal arrives in courses — soup, then the main course, then pudding — and a doctor puts you on a course of antibiotics. You play eighteen holes on a golf course, and when you decide what to do next you weigh up the best course of action. All of it is one picture: something running along a set path. And of course is so common that most learners meet it long before they meet any of the rest.

Definitions of course

1nouncourseA set of lessons on one subject, taken over a fixed period.A1~32%
“She signed up for an evening course in photography.”
synonyms: class, programme
2nounrouteThe direction or path something takes as it moves.B1~16%
“Heavy rain pushed the river off its usual course.”
synonyms: route, path
3nounseparateOne of the separate parts of a meal, served one after another.B1~2%
“We stayed for the main course but skipped pudding.”
4nountreatmentA fixed period of medical treatment.B2~2%
“The doctor put him on a course of antibiotics.”
5nounareaAn area of ground laid out for golf or for racing.B1~43%
“The golf course was still soaked from the storm.”
6nounactingA way of acting chosen from the options available.B2~5%
“Waiting another week seemed the safest course.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

course is a series or a path.

Phrases it lives in

of course — certainly; as anyone would expect
in due course — at the proper time, later on
run its course — carry on until it ends by itself
stay the course — keep going to the end of something hard

Where it comes from

Course runs on the Latin cursus, 'course of a race', from currō, 'run', and it came into English through Old French cours. Behind that stands the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱers-, 'to run'. Every sense still has running inside it: the river runs its course, the meal runs from one course to the next, the lessons run from week one to week ten.

Proto-Indo-European
*ḱers-
Middle English
cours
English, today
course

Built from

currō · Latin — run

From Middle English cours. From Middle English cours, from Old French cours, from Latin cursus (“course of a race”), from currō (“run”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ḱers- (“to run”). a doublet of cursus and cour.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in School & Learning, Sea & Sailing

Practise this word

course in the wild

Staged at a variety of courses, the U.S.
U.S. Open (golf)
Some of the early sites are now quite obscure, but in recent years, the event has generally been played at a small group of celebrated courses.
PGA Championship
Cross country running is a sport in which teams and individuals run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain such as dirt or grass.
Cross country running
A golf course is the grounds on which the sport of golf is played.
Golf course
There are also courses with a non-standard number of holes, such as 12 or 14.
Golf course

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the currō family

course

course — used about once every 7 pages · #89 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of course

1nouncourseA set of lessons on one subject, taken over a fixed period.A1~32%

“She signed up for an evening course in photography.”

synonyms: class, programme

2nounrouteThe direction or path something takes as it moves.B1~16%

“Heavy rain pushed the river off its usual course.”

synonyms: route, path

3nounseparateOne of the separate parts of a meal, served one after another.B1~2%

“We stayed for the main course but skipped pudding.”

4nountreatmentA fixed period of medical treatment.B2~2%

“The doctor put him on a course of antibiotics.”

5nounareaAn area of ground laid out for golf or for racing.B1~43%

“The golf course was still soaked from the storm.”

6nounactingA way of acting chosen from the options available.B2~5%

“Waiting another week seemed the safest course.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

course is a series or a path.