sojorner

Sojourn comes from Old French sojorner, which comes from Vulgar Latin *subdiurnare — to spend the day. Sub means under or during, and diurnum comes from dies, the Latin word for day. A sojourn was a single day's stay, maybe two. The word was modest in scope. You sojourned at an inn, meaning you stayed the night and moved on.

English borrowed the word in the thirteenth century, and it immediately began to stretch. By the 1300s, a sojourn could last weeks or months. Chaucer used it. Biblical translations used it — Abraham 'sojourned' in Egypt, a stay of unspecified but presumably long duration. The word kept its temporary quality but lost its daily measure.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sojourn had acquired a literary polish that 'stay' and 'visit' lacked. Expatriate writers sojourned in Paris. Consumptive invalids sojourned in the Alps. The word implied education, recovery, or artistic growth — a stay with purpose, not mere residence. Mark Twain's time in Europe was a sojourn. His time in Hartford was just living somewhere.

The word survives in modern English as a slightly formal alternative to 'stay,' carrying the implication that you will eventually leave. Nobody sojourns permanently. The Latin day — dies — is still in the word, even though no speaker of English hears it there. A sojourn is, etymologically, just spending a day. How long that day lasts is up to you.