dour

dour [door, douuhr, dou-er] SynonymsExamplesWord Origin adjective

sullen; gloomy: The captain’s dour look depressed us all.
severe; stern: His dour criticism made us regret having undertaken the job.
Scot. (of land) barren; rocky, infertile, or otherwise difficult or impossible to cultivate.

Origin of dour 1325–75; Middle English Latin dūrus dure1 Related formsdour·ly, adverbdour·ness, nounSynonyms for dour 1. morose, sour, moody. See glum. Related Words for dourest sullen, morose, harsh, glum, surly, bleak, dismal, dreary, forbidding, hard, saturnine, severe, sour, stringent, sulky, ugly, unfriendly, crabbed Examples from the Web for dourest Historical Examples of dourest

Mr Adam Wilkie is a Scot of the dourest and most sepulchral appearance.

Ian Hay

The rôle fitted him very well, for he is the dourest politician in Yugoslavia—a perfectly honest, upright, injudicious patriot.

Henry Baerlein

And so we might, had it not been for the innate depravity of man as exemplified in the dourest driver that ever handled reins.

Katharine Lee Bates

And this is how one Englishwoman found out that the Scot is at once the dourest and the tenderest of men.

Ian MacLaren

When he opened his cabin door he was confronted by the dourest aspect of the north that he had yet seen.

Bertrand W. Sinclair

British Dictionary definitions for dourest dour adjective

Derived Formsdourly, adverbdourness, nounWord Origin for dour C14: probably from Latin dūrus hard Word Origin and History for dourest dour adj.

mid-14c., “severe,” from Scottish and northern England dialect, probably from Latin durus “hard” (see endure); sense of “gloomy, sullen” is late 15c.