tournoyer
French, verb/tuʁ.nwa.je/
tournoyer is spelled T-O-U-R-N-O-Y-E-R (9 letters) and appears about once in every 3 million words in written French, the 54,486th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Tournoyer is a French verb meaning “to whirl, to swirl” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Tourner en faisant plusieurs tours”.
What does tournoyer mean in English?
verb
- 1
to whirl, to swirl
- 2
to eddy, to swirl
- 3
to whirl, to swirl, to twirl, to whirl round, to swirl round, to twirl round
faire tournoyer
- 4
to circle, to circle round, to wheel
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
verb: 1. Tourner en faisant plusieurs tours. 2. Faire une suite de tours et de détours. 3. Biaiser, chercher des détours, ne pas aller droit au but.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of tournoyer
- avoir + past participle infinitive multiword-construction
- tournoyant gerund participle present
- ayant + past participle gerund multiword-construction participle
- tournoyé participle past
- tournoie first-person indicative present
- tournoies indicative present second-person
- tournoyons first-person indicative plural
- tournoyez indicative plural present
- tournoient indicative plural present
- tournoyais first-person imperfect indicative
- tournoyait imperfect indicative singular
- tournoyions first-person imperfect indicative
- tournoyiez imperfect indicative plural
- tournoyaient imperfect indicative plural
- tournoyai first-person historic indicative
- tournoyas historic indicative past
- tournoya historic indicative past
- tournoyâmes first-person historic indicative
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce tournoyer?
- /tuʁ.nwa.je/
- \tuʁ.nwa.je\
- [tuʁ.nwa.je]
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to tournoyer
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is tournoyer in French?
tournoyer appears about once in every 3 million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).