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“dour”
dour (DOER or DOUR) (adjective); dourer, more dourer; dourest, most dourer
1. Severe or gloomy, and unfriendly and unresponsive toward others: Marge had a dour expression on her face when she heard about the higher prices at the store.
2. Grimly and stubbornly determined: The football player was in a dour mood when he tried to run for the goal with the football.
3. Marked by sternness or harshness; a forbidding nature: The people had dour feelings when they returned to see the results of the flooding of their homes.
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2. Grimly and stubbornly determined: The football player was in a dour mood when he tried to run for the goal with the football.
3. Marked by sternness or harshness; a forbidding nature: The people had dour feelings when they returned to see the results of the flooding of their homes.
The politician had a dour personality when he heard about the comments made about him by his opponent.
4. Etymology: "severe", from Scottish and northern England dialect, considered to be from Latin durus "hard"; the sense of "gloomy" is from about 1470.The pronunciation of dour traditionally rhymes with "tour"; as with DOER. The variant pronunciation that rhymes with "sour" (DOUR) is also considered to be widely used and so it is also considered an acceptable pronunciation by some authorities.
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This entry is located in the following unit:
duro-, dur-, dura-
(page 1)
Word Entries at Get Words:
“dour”
Severe or gloomy, and being unfriendly and unresponsive toward others. (2)
This entry is located in the following unit:
Word a Day Revisited Index of Cartoons Illustrating the Meanings of Words
(page 33)