dour
/ˈdʊə/US/ˈdʊɹ/
dour adjective: stern, harsh and forbidding. Also the alternative form of daur.
Adjective
dour (comparative dourer or more dour, superlative dourest or most dour)
- Stern, harsh and forbidding.
- The principal reason is that, in competition with modern road vehicles running over motorways, B.R. has a dour struggle to match the performance of its rivals cost-wise.1961 October, “Editorial: The importance of the "Roadrailer"”, in Trains Illustrated, page 577
- I was reminded of the dour priests and salesmen of the nineteenth century who believed that the plebs wouldn’t be able to handle getting the vote, or a decent wage, or, least of all, leisure, and who backed the seventy-hour workweek as an efficacious instrument in the fight against liquor.2017, chapter 6, in Elizabeth Manton, transl., Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, translation of Gratis geld voor iedereen by Rutger Bregman, page 149
- Synonyms:
- forbidding, harsh, severe, stern
- Unyielding and obstinate.
- Synonyms:
- stubborn
- Expressing gloom or melancholy.
- Synonyms:
- dejected, gloomy, melancholic, sullen
Also used as
dour is also the alternative form of daur.
Examples of dour in a sentence
- Hayek had contributed the foreword, in which he declared that “he got so fascinated” by the book—high praise from the dour Viennese sage—that he read it from start to finish in one sitting.2022, Gary Gerstle, chapter 4, in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order […] , New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, Part II. The...
- Tuchel arrived in Belgrade insisting England were ready to improve and show their quality after the dour victories that have characterised their World Cup qualification campaign.2025 September 9, Phil McNulty, “Serbia 0-5 England”, in BBC Sport:
Synonyms of dour
Forms of dour
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | dourer |
| comparative | more dour |
| superlative | dourest |
| superlative | most dour |
| Noun | |
| plural | dours |
Origin of dour
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.
Words formed from dour
Words that rhyme with dour
4 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about dour
- What does dour mean?
- Dour means stern, harsh and forbidding.
- How do you use dour in a sentence?
- Hayek had contributed the foreword, in which he declared that “he got so fascinated” by the book—high praise from the dour Viennese sage—that he read it from start to finish in one sitting.
- What part of speech is dour?
- Dour is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce dour?
- Dour is pronounced /ˈdʊə/ (UK).
Words near dour in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dour (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dour.wav.
Cite this entry: “dour.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dour. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.