the.com/resort
The place you go to relax, and the last thing you turn to when nothing else works.
means A resort is both a vacation destination built for leisure and, in the phrase 'last resort,' the final option left when every better one has run out.
from From French 'resortir,' meaning to go out again or have recourse to, built from 're-' (again) plus 'sortir' (to go out). The sense split in two directions over time: a resort became a place you turn to or return to for help — eventually the place you retreat to for rest and pleasure — while 'last resort' kept the older, starker meaning of the final recourse left once all others are exhausted.
- same root
- 'resort' and 'sort' share etymological ancestry
- phrase irony
- 'last resort' once meant final refuge, not failure
- double life
- one word means both paradise and desperation
- first english use
- appeared 16th century meaning recourse, not vacation