DOUR • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Dour

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dˈaʊər/ /daʊr/ Listen

Dour

adjective

Stubbornly unyielding. Synonyms: dogged, persistent, pertinacious, tenacious, unyielding. "Dour determination" , "The most vocal and pertinacious of all the critics" , "A mind not gifted to discover truth but tenacious to hold it" , "Men tenacious of opinion"

Harshly uninviting or formidable in manner or appearance. Synonyms: forbidding, grim. "A forbidding scowl" , "A grim man loving duty more than humanity" , "Undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw"

Showing a brooding ill humor. Synonyms: dark, glowering, glum, moody, morose, saturnine, sour, sullen. "The proverbially dour New England Puritan" , "A glum, hopeless shrug" , "He sat in moody silence" , "A morose and unsociable manner" , "A saturnine, almost misanthropic young genius" , "A sour temper" , "A sullen crowd"

See more definitions of Dour...

See images of 'Dour'

Etymology of 'Dour'

Share |

"Dour" Quotes from Famous Books

... scalpel) is that he cuts into the heart of life; but he makes a very shallow incision, if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. Deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and sentimental as a penny novelette. The literature of can-dour unearths innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called romance. It perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but it does not perceive the deepest of sins—the sin of vanity—vanity which is the mother of all day-dreams ...

— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... the restless curiosity of the younger had led them to and fro. Out there the line between mistress and servant had inevitably been supplanted by the bond of companionship; but when they returned to the more humdrum civilization of the western world, it was Janet whose dour Scotch rectitude had re-established the distinction. She took her meals with old Bates at a little table in the butlery, found her chief relaxation in the one motion-picture house that Hambleton boasted, and for the ...

— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... practice is still followed by many, but being compelled now to give an apparently scientific reason for their conduct, they say that it is so placed to produce a draught. But this it does not do. The practice originated in the belief that the slow or dour fire was spell-bound by witchcraft, and the poker was so placed that it would form the shape of a cross with the front bar of the grate, and thus the witch power be destroyed. In early times when the poker was ...

— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... single-tree and brought the racing dogs to an abrupt halt. The priest and he righted the sled, and Mac straddling it, tucked in a loosened end of fur. When all was again in running order, Mac was on the same side as Father Wills. He still wore that look of dour ill-temper, and especially did he glower at the unfortunate Kaviak, seized with a fresh fit of coughing that filled the ...

— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic elegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law of Scotland's Parliament which ...

— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

More quotes...