Tuesday, January 7, 2014

terminus

terminus \TUR-muh-nuhs\, noun:

1. the end or extremity of anything.
2. either end of a railroad line.
3. British. the station or the town at the end of a railway or bus route.
4. the point toward which anything tends; goal or end.

We were like tram-cars running on their lines from terminus to terminus, and it was possible to calculate within small limits the number of passengers they would carry.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919
…tilting away in a rush past cinemas and shops to the hollow where the collieries are, then up again, past a little rural church, under the ash trees, on in a rush to the terminus, the last little ugly place of industry, the cold little town that shivers on the edge of the wild, gloomy country beyond.
-- D.H. Lawrence, "Tickets, Please," England, My England, 1922

Terminus comes from the Latin word of the same spelling which meant "boundary, limit, end."

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