Adjacent Words

dour definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: stubbornly unyielding; "dogged persistence"; "dour determination"; "the most vocal and pertinacious of all the critics"; "a mind not gifted to discover truth but tenacious to hold it"- T.S.Eliot; "men tenacious of opinion" [syn: dogged, dour, persistent, pertinacious, tenacious, unyielding]
2: harshly uninviting or formidable in manner or appearance; "a dour, self-sacrificing life"; "a forbidding scowl"; "a grim man loving duty more than humanity"; "undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw"- J.M.Barrie [syn: dour, forbidding, grim]
3: showing a brooding ill humor; "a dark scowl"; "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"- Bruce Bliven; "a sour temper"; "a sullen crowd" [syn: dark, dour, glowering, glum, moody, morose, saturnine, sour, sullen]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Latin durus hard — more at during Date: 14th century 1. stern, harsh 2. obstinate, unyielding 3. gloomy, sullen • dourly adverb • dourness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. severe, stern, or sullenly obstinate in manner or appearance. Derivatives: dourly adv. dourness n. Etymology: ME (orig. Sc.), prob. f. Gael. dúr dull, obstinate, perh. f. L durus hard

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Dour Dour, a. [Cf. F. dur, L. durus.] Hard; inflexible; obstinate; sour in aspect; hardy; bold. [Scot.] A dour wife, a sour old carlin. --C. Reade.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you describe someone as dour, you mean that they are very serious and unfriendly. ...a dour, taciturn man... ADJ • dourly The old man stared dourly at them. ADV: usu ADV with v, also ADV adj [disapproval]

Moby Thesaurus

Spartan, Spartanic, adamant, adamantine, astringent, austere, authoritarian, beetle-browed, black, black-browed, bleak, cast-iron, cheerless, cold, crabbed, dark, dejected, demanding, dismal, dreary, dumpish, exacting, exigent, firm, flinty, forbidding, frowning, fundamentalist, gloomy, glowering, glum, grim, grum, hard, hard-core, hard-nosed, hardy, harsh, hidebound, immovable, immutable, implacable, impliable, inclement, inelastic, inexorable, inflexible, intransigent, iron, ironbound, ironclad, ironhanded, irreconcilable, lowering, melancholy, meticulous, moodish, moody, mopey, moping, mopish, morose, mumpish, muscle-bound, obdurate, obstinate, orthodox, procrustean, purist, puristic, puritan, puritanic, relentless, rigid, rigorist, rigoristic, rigorous, rock-ribbed, rockbound, rough, rugged, saturnine, scowling, severe, sour, steely, stern, stiff, straightlaced, straitlaced, strict, stringent, stubborn, sulky, sullen, surly, tough, ugly, unaffected, unalterable, unbending, unchangeable, uncompromising, unfriendly, ungentle, ungiving, unmoved, unrelenting, unsparing, unyielding