dour 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: bulldog, dogged, 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: 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, glowering, glum, moody, morose, saturnine, sour, sullen]

English

Pronunciation

• a US ˈduːɚ
• Rhymes with: -uːə(r)
• Homophones: doer
• a US ˈdaʊɚ
• Rhymes with: -aʊə(r)
• Homophones: dower

Adjective

1. stern, harsh and forbidding
2. gloomy and sullenly unhappy
3. unyielding and obstinate

Derived terms

• dourly
• dourness

Translations

Breton

Noun

dour

1. water

Not to be confused with dower.

Dour is a Walloon municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut. On 1 January 2006 the municipality had 16,810 inhabitants. The total area is 33.32 km², giving a population density of 505 inhabitants per km².

Since 1989 Dour has hosted the annual Dour Festival, an alternative music festival.

Dour is often considered the western end of the sillon industriel, the former industrial backbone of Wallonia, home to about two-thirds of the population.

See also

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