Language is confusing. There's the Hybrid style of bike and the Touring style of bike, and then there's a bike that may be a hybrid of two styles and a bike that may be used for touring regardless of the style of bike.

But Hybrid as a style seems like a fairly recent development. Touring as a style goes back a little further, so the real question is, "Are hybrids really touring bikes?" The answer is still "no," but that's the question. ;-)

The bike before my LHT was a Hybrid, and they couldn't be more different. I used to think Hybrid was a cross between a Mountain and a Road bike, but there is very little of a Road bike features in a Hybrid. Really it seems more like a hybrid between a Mountain bike and a City bike.

Likewise a Touring bike has little in common with a Mountain bike. It takes wider tires, and puts you more upright than a Road Bike, but these are also features that are also standard in a City bike. And I'm pretty sure what we think of today as a City bike has been around longer than Mountain Bikes, regardless of whether or not it was called a City Bike.

It seems to me, but I'm no historian and could easily be corrected, that the City bike is the most direct descendant of the original Safety bike. All the other styles are simply modifying the parts of the City bike that don't mesh with the intended function. Mountain bikes and road bikes may be at the extreme ends, Hybrids may be closer to City Bikes than Mountain bikes, and Touring bikes may be closer than Road bikes, but I don't think that makes Touring bikes Hybrids. When you get a Hybrid, you expect some Mountain characteristics, and when you get a Touring bike, you expect some Road characteristics, so in a sense they may both be "hybrids," but I think only one is a "Hybrid". But, of course, there aren't set standards for any of the characteristics, so really defining a bike comes down to how many of it's features belong predominantly to the ideal of one particular style. Hybrids tend to have a very aggressive, upright position, wide, sometimes nobby tires, short frames with a down-sloping top tube, and sometimes a front suspension, all of which I consider to be Mountain Bike traits and few of which tend to be touring bike traits, but there will always be bikes that blur the lines. Especially since the lines are not that clear to begin with.