tournure

plural tournures

1. countableuncountableManner, bearing.

   Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that she had the tournure of a princess.

   1879, Henry James, Daisy Miller, London: Harper & Brothers

   1 more example

   Fortunately, your Parisian tournure will save your vivacity from vulgarity. Though, I must say, not one English girl in a thousand is to be trusted out of the security of insipidity; but you are French enough to be animated without being pert.

   1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter III, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 25

2. archaiccountableuncountableTurning shape, contour; curvature of a figure or outline.

   the inward tournure of the legs and anl ankle-joints, and the freedom of the hip-joint, facilitate the application of the grasping foot

   1847, A Sketch of the history of Monkeys

   2 more examples

   the tournure of the horns, which, at first sweeping backwards, gradually return so as to point forwards, with a tendency to a spiral curve.

   1840, Quadrupeds; or, Outlines of a popular history of the class

   […] the word serpentine does not express the great line which makes the elegant tournure of a statue; for nature does not permit our head, in its ordinary motions, to turn more than a fourth of the circumference either to the right or to the left.

   1855, The Artist, volume 1, page 50

3. countableuncountablePhrasing, turn of phrase.

   Voiture belonged to a race of poets essentially French, who sacrificed to the graces instead of the muses; to whom Cupid, with his wings and arrows, was the ideal of love, and whose art of poetry consisted in epigram, tournure, readiness, and facility.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 246

4. countablehistoricaluncountablefashionSynonym of bustle: any device used by women to expand the skirt of a dress below the waist.

   Synonyms: bustle