bourne

plural bournes

1. archaiccountableA boundary; a limit.

   [T]he dread of ſomething after death, / The vndiſcouer'd country, from whoſe borne / No trauiler returnes, puzzels the will, […]

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (Second Quarto), London: […] I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing] […], published 1604, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i], signatures G2, recto – G2, verso

   2 more examples

   [T]hough I did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead.

   1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “[Our Lady of the Snows.] Father Apollinaris.”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, page 91

   For though from out our bourne of Time and Place, The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.

   1889, Alfred Tennyson, Crossing the Bar

2. archaiccountableuncountableA goal or destination.

   I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured.

   1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 12

plural bournes

1. A stream or brook in which water flows only seasonally; a small stream or brook.

1. A market town and civil parish with a town council in South Kesteven district, Lincolnshire, England (OS grid ref TF0920).
2. A river in Wiltshire, England, which flows into the Salisbury-Hampshire Avon.
3. A small river in Dorset, England, which flows into the English Channel at Bournemouth.
4. Either of two rivers in Surrey, England, passing through Chertsey and Addlestone before converging and flowing into the Thames.
5. A small river in Kent, England, which joins the River Medway.
6. A town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, named after Jonathan Bourne Sr.

   It'd be roughly on par with 2003's Bouchard No. 120 oil spill, in which an estimated 98,000 gallons spilled into Buzzards Bay off the coast of Bourne, Massachusetts.

   2015 May 21, Eliott C. McLaughlin, “How does Santa Barbara match up with other U.S. oil spills?”, in CNN, archived from the original on 01 Apr 2016

7. A surname.

   When HBO airs “Behind the Candelabra” on May 26, the world will get to see Matt Damon play Liberace’s drug-addled, surgically enhanced lover – a role about as far from Jason Bourne as it gets.

   2013 March 11, Adam Markovitz, “Matt Damon on (maybe) returning to ‘Bourne’ and playing Liberace’s lover”, in CNN, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2021