dour

adj

Etymology: 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.

1. 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.”

   “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.”

2. Unyielding and obstinate.
3. Expressing gloom or melancholy.

noun

1. Alternative form of daur.

   “The detachment that went out the day before yesterday on a dour have not returned: the party consisted of 200 Highlanders and 100 Sikhs, also twenty horsemen.”