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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

dour.

Stern, harsh and forbidding.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈdʊə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈdaʊə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈdʊɹ/General-American/ˈdaʊɚ/General-American
  1. Stern, harsh and forbidding.

  2. Unyielding and obstinate.

  3. Expressing gloom or melancholy.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Scots dour, possibly from Latin dūrus (“hard, stern”), via Middle Irish dúr. Compare French dur, Catalan dur, Italian duro, Portuguese duro, Romanian dur, Spanish duro. Doublet of dure.

noun
  1. Alternative form of daur.

    alt-of · alternative
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.