dour
1. 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
• Similar to:
ill-natured
• Derivationally related forms:
sullenness (for: sullen), sourness (for: sour), moroseness (for: morose), moodiness (for: moody), glumness (for: glum)
2. 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, persistent, pertinacious, tenacious, unyielding
• Similar to:
stubborn, obstinate, unregenerate
• Derivationally related forms:
unyieldingness (for: unyielding), tenaciousness (for: tenacious), tenacity (for: tenacious), pertinacity (for: pertinacious), persistence (for: persistent), doggedness (for: dogged)
3. 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
• Similar to:
unpleasant
• Derivationally related forms:
grimness (for: grim)
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