turnout
Pluralturnouts
- 1The number or proportion of people who attend or take part in an event, especially an election.
Election officials reported record turnout across the district.
Bad weather kept turnout low at the outdoor festival.
Similarattendance, participation, crowd, gate
Note
Election reporting is where the word does most of its work, and it takes two shapes. As a mass noun it pairs with adjectives like low, good or record (low turnout on weekdays). As a count noun it carries a figure (a turnout of over 90 per cent). Alistair Jones, writing in 2016, ties Belgium's exceptionally good turnout to compulsory voting, a reminder that the figure measures who took part.
- 2A widened area at the side of a road where a vehicle can pull over and stop.
The driver eased into a gravel turnout to let the faster cars pass.
Several scenic turnouts line the mountain highway.
Note
A roadside word of American usage, at home on mountain and coastal highways. Slow vehicles use turnouts to let faster traffic by, and sightseers use them to stop. Douglas Steakley's Photographing Big Sur (2011) sends photographers to the turnout south of a restaurant. The scenic turnout is the classic pairing, marking a spot built for the view as much as for the traffic.
- 3Something prominently brought forward or shown off, especially a horse-drawn carriage together with its horses and attendants.
The bride's turnout, from the polished carriage to the matched horses, was the talk of the season.
He prided himself on a smart turnout whenever he drove through the park.
Note
Display is the core here, and the carriage is its usual case: a fine or smart turnout meant horses, vehicle and trappings judged together. H. L. Brækstad's 1886 translation of Asbjørnsen's Folk and Fairy Tales hyphenates it as turn-out. The Carriage Journal (1990) still uses it for turnouts driven randem in circus parades.
- 4Rotation of the legs at the hips that turns the feet and knees outward, away from the front of the body.
Years of training gave the dancer remarkable turnout.
Forcing turnout from the knees instead of the hips can cause injury.
Note
A dancer's word for a capacity as much as a position: dancers have turnout, work on it, or force it. The rotation must come from the hip joint, and it is the alignment the five classical positions are built on. Because it is a matter of degree, it is usually treated as a mass noun, as in good turnout or limited turnout.
- 5A set of movable rails that allows a train to switch from one track to another; a set of points.
The freight train was diverted onto a siding through the turnout.
Engineers replaced the worn turnout near the station.
Note
Railway engineering's name for the whole switching assembly, chiefly American, and the equivalent of a set of points. Railway writing pairs it with precise verbs: trains take the turnout into the loop, and lines are relaid with high-speed turnouts. A passing track has one at each end, which is why the 1981 National Transportation Safety Board report can speak of the east turnout.
- 6The net amount of produce or goods that is yielded or produced.
The mill's weekly turnout of flour exceeded expectations.
Drought sharply reduced the farm's turnout of grain.
Similaroutput, yield, production
- 7The act of coming forth or emerging into view.
The sudden turnout of spectators onto the field stopped the match.
The turnout of mourners from the church filled the entire street.
Note
A noun made straight from the phrasal verb turn out, and here it stays closest to that verb: a crowd turning out of a church or spilling onto a field. The same origin lies behind every other sense of the word. Where this sense describes the coming forth itself, the attendance meaning counts the people who came.
- 8The act of putting animals out to pasture so that they can graze.
After a long winter indoors, the herd's turnout to pasture lifted everyone's spirits.
Early turnout can damage pastures that are still too wet.
Less common meanings
- 9A stoppage of work by employees to force an increase in wages; a strike.
The mill hands declared a turnout when the foremen cut their wages again.
News of the turnout spread quickly through the manufacturing towns.
Similarstrike, walkout, stoppage
Note
A labor word now dated. Workers who walked off the job turned out, and the stoppage itself was a turnout. Today strike is the word to use. Turnout in this sense belongs to history and to historical writing about mills and wage disputes. It also named the workers themselves, as the dated word for a striker shows.
- 10A worker who takes part in a strike; a striker.
A lone turnout stood arguing with the foreman by the gate.
The magistrate questioned each turnout about the disturbance.
Similarstriker
Note
The same dated labor vocabulary, applied to the person rather than the stoppage. Brian Lewis's The Middlemost and the Milltowns (2002) shows how slippery the word can be. A mill partner at Accrington anticipating "a visit from the turnout" could mean one striker or the strikers as a body. In modern prose, striker avoids the ambiguity.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of turnout apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
This word is formed from the verb phrase "turn out."