Etymology
Somewhat uncertain, but appears to be from Proto-Indo-European *-tew- + *-r-eh₂. Note however that some cases are built on agentives in -tōr: e.g. cēnsūra, gladiātūra.[1] Resemblance to the future active participle -tūrus and archaic infinitive -tūrum is evidently accidental, though substantivizations like futūrus may have reinforced the use of -tūra.
Productive in earlier Latin but gradually overtaken by -tiō.
Suffix
-tūra f (genitive -tūrae); first declension
- Used to form action nouns expressing concrete results as well as activities: -ing, -ure
Usage notes
The suffix -tūra is added to the supine form of a verb to create a first-declension noun naming the verb's action or the result of that action.
- Examples:
- pictūra (“painting, picture”), from pictum, supine of pingō (“I paint”)
- scrīptūra (“a writing, act of writing”), from scrīptum, supine of scrībō (“I write”)
The suffix -tūra resembles the feminine form of (but may not be related to) the future active participle ending -tūrus, which describes impending or imminent action (e.g. pictūrus "about to paint"; scrīptūrus "on the point of writing").
References
Miller, D. Gary (2006) Latin Suffixal Derivatives in English: and their Indo-European Ancestry, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, § 3.9 -tūra/-sūra (> E -ture/-sure), pages 118–119