Other forms: turned, turns, turning
To turn is to go round, or to change the way you are facing. A key turning in a lock, a car turning left at the lights, your head turning when someone behind you says your name.
It is one of the busiest verbs in English. It means to become: milk turns sour, leaves turn brown, he turns forty in June. It builds phrasal verbs by the dozen — turn on the tap, turn off the light, turn up late, turn down an offer, turn out to be wrong. As a noun it is your go in a game or a queue (it's your turn now) and a bend or junction in a road (take the second turn on the right). Take turns means one person after another; in turn means each in the proper order.
1verbturnTo change the direction you are facing or moving in.
“Turn left at the church and keep going for a mile.”
2verbrotateTo move round a central point, or to make something do this.
“She turned the key twice in the lock.”
3verbbecomeTo become something different, or to make something become it.
“The sky turned a deep orange before the storm.”
4nounchanceThe chance to do something, passing from one person to the next.
“Wait your turn like everybody else.”
5nounplaceA place where a road bends or branches off, or the act of going round.
“We missed our turn and had to drive back three miles.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: rotate
Turn arrived twice over, from Old English turnian and from Old French torner, and both lead back to Latin tornāre, to round something off on a lathe. That came from tornus, a lathe, borrowed from Greek τόρνος, the tool used for drawing circles. Under all of it sits the Proto-Indo-European root terh₁-, to rub or bore by turning. Every turn of a key repeats a carpenter's circle.
Proto-Indo-European
*terh₁-
Middle English
turnen
English, today
turn
Built from
From Middle English turnen. From Middle English turnen, from Old English turnian, tyrnan (“to turn, rotate, revolve”), from Proto-West Germanic turnēn (“to turn, lathe”) (also the source of German turnen and its derivatives) and Old French torner (“to turn”), both from Latin tornāre (“to round off, turn in a lathe”), from tornus (“lathe”), from Ancient Greek τόρνος (“turning-lathe: a tool used for making circles”), from Proto-Indo-European terh₁- (“to rub, rub by turning, turn, twist, bore”). Cognate with Old English þrāwan (“to turn, twist, wind”), whence English throw. Displaced native wenden from wendan (see wend), and trenden from trendan (see trend), among several other terms.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA