/rɪˈzɔːrt/
[noun] A place where people go to relax and enjoy themselves, especially on holiday; also used to describe turning to something for help when other options have failed, as in 'a last resort'.
The word 'resort' originally meant 'to go back' — making every holiday destination literally a place you return to.
The story of 'resort' begins in Latin, with the verb 'sortiri', meaning to draw lots, to allot, or to go out. From this root came the Latin noun 'sors' (fate, lot, or portion), which carried the idea of something assigned to you — your share of destiny. This eventually blended with the prefix 're-', meaning again or back, producing a sense of going back to something that was already determined or set for you.
From Latin, the word travelled into Old French as 'resortir', a verb meaning to go out again, to escape, or to return. In medieval Old French legal language, 'ressort' referred to a jurisdiction — the territory to which a court's authority 'went out' and to which cases were sent back for judgement. This legal flavour gave the word a strong association with appeal and recourse, the idea of turning back to a higher power when ordinary means had failed.
English borrowed 'resort' from Old French around the late 14th century, initially keeping much of this legal and procedural sense. To 'resort' to something meant to turn back to it, to apply to it as a source of help or authority. You might resort to a king's court, resort to prayer, or resort to an old remedy. The word carried a slight tone of necessity — you resorted to something because you had to, because other paths were closed.
Over the following centuries, 'resort' began to broaden. By the 16th and 17th centuries, it was commonly used to mean a place frequently visited — 'a great resort of merchants', for example, simply meant a place where merchants gathered in large numbers. The word had shifted from the act of returning to the place itself that people returned to. This is the same conceptual leap we see in words like 'haunt', which also moved from the action of visiting repeatedly to the place visited.
The modern sense of a holiday resort — a hotel or leisure destination built for relaxation and pleasure — emerged firmly in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the growth of seaside culture and spa towns gave the word its most glamorous identity. Places like Bath in England or Deauville in France were described as resorts because crowds 'resorted' there, season after season. The two meanings — the holiday destination and the phrase 'last resort' — now seem like completely different words, yet they share the same ancient heartbeat: the act of going back, of returning, of turning somewhere when you need to.