Sojourn Meaning: Definition, Pronunciation & Examples
She spent a sojourn in the mountains. He sojourned in Paris for a summer. Two sentences, one word doing two jobs — a noun for the stay itself, and a verb for the act of staying. And in both cases the word does something the plain word stay cannot do: it tells you the stay was temporary, away from home, and a little out of the ordinary. A sojourn is not a holiday exactly, and not a visit exactly. It is a short period of living somewhere else, as if you belonged there for a while.
That is why the word survives. It is literary, formal, and a little old-fashioned — the dictionaries all say so — but nothing else in English captures quite the same idea: not a trip, which is about movement, and not a stay, which says nothing about home. A sojourn is a temporary home away from home, and the word carries a faint flavour of the 13th century with it, because that is when it entered the language.
What Does “Sojourn” Mean? The Dictionary Definitions
| Dictionary | Definition of sojourn |
|---|---|
| Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries | Verb, intransitive, literary: “to stay for a short time in a place away from your home.” Forms: sojourns, sojourned, sojourning. UK /ˈsɒdʒən/, US /ˈsəʊdʒɜːrn/. |
| Cambridge Dictionary | Verb [I, usually + adv/prep], literary: UK /ˈsɒdʒ.ɜːn/, US /ˈsoʊ.dʒɝːn/. Examples: “Winston Churchill and Francois Mitterrand have sojourned at this glorious former monastery.” |
| Merriam-Webster | Noun: “a temporary stay” — “a sojourn in the country.” Verb: to stay temporarily. First known use: noun 13th century, verb 14th century. |
| Collins COBUILD | Countable noun, literary: “A sojourn is a short stay in a place that is not your home.” — “Dining outside as the sun goes down was a highlight of our sojourn.” Verb: “to stay or reside temporarily.” |
Every dictionary marks the word the same way: literary. That label is doing real work. It tells you that sojourn belongs to written English — travel writing, history, novels, formal prose — and that using it in a text message about a weekend away would sound odd. The meaning is simple; the register is the thing to learn.
How to Pronounce “Sojourn”: UK and US
The pronunciation has a genuine transatlantic split, and — unusually — the American verb can stress a different syllable from the American noun:
- UK: /ˈsɒdʒən/ or /ˈsɒdʒɜːn/ — SOJ-urn. Stress on the first syllable, with the short o of hot. Cambridge gives /ˈsɒdʒ.ɜːn/; Oxford gives /ˈsɒdʒən/.
- US noun: /ˈsoʊˌdʒɜrn/ — SOH-jurn, stress on the first syllable, with the long oh of go.
- US verb: /ˈsoʊ.dʒɝːn/ or /soʊˈdʒɜrn/ — SOH-jurn or soh-JURN. Collins and Webster’s New World both record the verb with second-syllable stress as a standard American variant.
The spelling is the best guide to the sound: so- + -journ, and journ is the same root as in journey and journal — all of them built on the idea of a day.
Sojourn as a Noun and a Verb
As a noun, sojourn is countable: a sojourn, two sojourns, a brief sojourn, a long sojourn. It names a stay that is understood to be temporary — the person will go home again — and it usually implies that the stay lasted long enough to feel like living somewhere rather than passing through. Merriam-Webster’s examples show the scale: “a two-month sojourn with her family,” “a two-week sojourn in the mountains,” “a sojourn in the country,” “a recent sojourn in Sicily.” The noun’s most frequent partners are brief sojourn, short sojourn, sojourn in a place, sojourn with people. And the stay is always somewhere that is not home — that is part of the definition, in every dictionary.
As a verb, sojourn is intransitive — it takes no direct object — and it is almost always followed by an adverb or a prepositional phrase saying where: “to sojourn in Paris,” “to sojourn at Camp David,” “to sojourn with friends.” Cambridge marks it “[I usually + adv/prep]” for exactly this reason. You cannot “sojourn a place”; you sojourn in a place. The verb forms are regular: sojourn, sojourns, sojourned, sojourning. Washington Irving uses it in 1820 — Ichabod Crane “sojourned, or, as he expressed it, ‘tarried,’ in Sleepy Hollow” — and Charlotte Brontë uses it in Jane Eyre (1847): “wherever you have sojourned.” Both authors chose the word for the same reason modern writers do: it says “lived there for a while, as a guest, and then moved on” in a single word. The derived noun sojourner names the person: someone staying temporarily away from home.
Where the Word Comes From
Sojourn is one of the oldest French borrowings in English. Merriam-Webster traces the noun to Middle English sojorn, from Anglo-French sujur and sujurn, from the verb sujurner — and the verb itself from Vulgar Latin subdiurnare, built from Latin sub, “under, during,” and Late Latin diurnum, “day.” Collins gives the same history in fewer words: 13th century, from Old French sojorner, from Vulgar Latin subdiurnāre, “to spend a day.”
The literal meaning is therefore “to spend the day” — to pass time somewhere, for a day or for a while. And that Latin root, diurnum, is the same one that gives us journey (originally a day’s travel), journal (originally a daily record), and diurnal (of the day). Once you see journ inside sojourn, the word stops being a spelling puzzle and becomes a member of a family you already know.
Sojourn vs Stay, Visit, and Stopover
The plain word stay covers almost everything sojourn covers, which raises the question of why the longer word exists at all. The answer is precision and tone:
| Word | What it says | Register |
|---|---|---|
| Sojourn | A temporary stay away from home, long enough to feel like living there for a while | Literary, formal |
| Stay | Remaining in a place for a time — the plain, general word | Everyday |
| Visit | Going to see a place or person, usually briefly and with a purpose | Everyday |
| Stopover | A brief halt during a longer journey, on the way somewhere else | Everyday, travel |
The differences are about duration and dwelling. A stopover is measured in hours and you never unpack. A visit is measured in hours or days and you are a guest. A stay can be any length and says nothing about home.
There is one more comparison worth making: sojourn and wander. To wander is to move around without a fixed purpose or destination. To sojourn is to stop moving and stay somewhere for a while. Our guide to wonder and wander covers the moving word in full, including the common confusion with wonder.
Correct vs Incorrect
| Correct | Incorrect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| They enjoyed a brief sojourn in Paris. | They enjoyed a brief sojurn in Paris. | The spelling is sojourn — with an o after the j. “Sojurn” is not a word. |
| She sojourned in the mountains for a month. | She sojourned the mountains for a month. | Sojourn is intransitive — it takes no direct object. Use in: “sojourned in the mountains.” |
| Our sojourn in Sicily lasted two weeks. | Our sojourn at home lasted two weeks. | A sojourn is, by definition, a stay away from home. At home, it is simply a stay. |
| He sojourned with friends in the country. | He sojourned to friends in the country. | The pattern is sojourn in a place or sojourn with people — not sojourn to. |
Common Mistakes with Sojourn
Spelling it “sojurn” or “soejourn.” These are the two attested misspellings, and both are easy to make: “sojurn” drops the o after the j, and “soejourn” adds an e that does not belong. The correct spelling is s-o-j-o-u-r-n. Remember the journ root — the same letters as in journey — and the spelling takes care of itself.
Using it as a transitive verb. “We sojourned Paris” is wrong in the same way “we stayed Paris” is wrong. The verb needs a preposition: “we sojourned in Paris.” This is the single most common grammatical error with the word.
Using it in casual speech. “We sojourned at my mum’s for the weekend” is correct English and strange English at the same time. The word is literary, and in conversation it sounds affected. In speech, say stayed. Save sojourn for writing where its formality is an asset — travel pieces, history, memoir, fiction.
Forgetting that it implies temporariness. A sojourn ends. Someone who moves to a city permanently has not sojourned there; they have moved there.
Examples of Sojourn in Real Sentences
- A sojourn in the colonies could, in fact, be a means of acquiring fame and wealth. (Cambridge corpus example)
- In the course of our sojourn we saw and discussed a number of shows. (Cambridge corpus example)
- The visit with my father was preceded by a sojourn with my sister. (Merriam-Webster example, from Gourmet)
- On a recent sojourn in Sicily, I frequently found myself remembering that page in the children’s encyclopedia. (Merriam-Webster example, from The Atlantic)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is sojourn a noun or a verb?
Both. As a noun it means a temporary stay — “a sojourn in the country.” As a verb it means to stay temporarily — “they sojourned in the mountains.” The noun is first recorded in the 13th century, the verb in the 14th.
How do you pronounce sojourn?
UK /ˈsɒdʒən/ — SOJ-urn, stress on the first syllable. US noun /ˈsoʊˌdʒɜrn/ — SOH-jurn; the American verb is also pronounced /soʊˈdʒɜrn/ — soh-JURN — with the stress on the second syllable.
Is sojourn a formal word?
Yes. Every major dictionary marks it as literary. In everyday speech, stay or visit is the natural choice; sojourn belongs in travel writing, history, fiction, and formal prose.
What is the difference between a sojourn and a stay?
A stay is the general word for remaining somewhere for a time. A sojourn is a specific kind of stay: temporary, away from home, and long enough to feel like living there for a while. A weekend at a hotel is a stay; a month in a rented cottage in another country is a sojourn.
The Takeaway
Sojourn is the literary word for a temporary stay away from home — a noun (“a brief sojourn in Paris”) and an intransitive verb (“they sojourned in Paris”), pronounced UK /ˈsɒdʒən/, US /ˈsoʊˌdʒɜrn/. It entered English in the 13th century from Old French, built on Latin subdiurnare, “to spend a day” — the same root as journey and journal. Use it in writing where its formality fits, spell it with the o after the j, and always give it a preposition: sojourn in a place, sojourn with people.
Sources: Cambridge Dictionary — sojourn; Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries — sojourn; Merriam-Webster — sojourn.
