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Dour

Dialect
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Stern, stubborn, and unyielding; grimly resolute or humourlessly severe.

Detailed Definition
"Dour" is perhaps the most internationally recognised characterisation of the Scottish temperament, the grim, unsmiling refusal to be impressed or delighted. In poetry it appears as both critique and celebration, depending on context — dourness as social failing or as admirable resistance to nonsense and superficiality. Burns satirises the dour Presbyterian in "Holy Willie's Prayer," while later poets use it with more ambivalence. The word's hard consonants and closed vowel enact the quality it describes, making it a small self-fulfilling prophecy of Scottish character.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Dour" means stern, stubborn, grim, or humourless; A poet might write: "The dour grey sky refused tae clear — / a fitting backdrop tae the year." uses weather to express mood; "He was dour as weathered granite, / shaped by wind and slow to man it." characterises resilience through hardness; "Behind her dour and careful face / lay warmth she kept in its proper place." subverts expectation; "Dour the road that climbs the brae, / but fairer still at close of day." redeems hardship with perspective; "The dour land yields its gifts in time — / patience is its native rhyme." applies the word to agricultural endurance; "Even dour men weep at last — / when love proves stronger than the past." reveals hidden tenderness
Additional Notes
Dour has crossed from Scots into general English usage, which is a mark of how precisely it fills a semantic need. It captures a particular kind of grim, unyielding resistance — not cruelty but an implacable refusal to yield or to show weakness — that has become associated with a particular Scottish character type. In poetry it often functions as a term of complicated respect: the "dour" figure is hard to love but impossible to break. For students, the word is important both as a character descriptor and as a cultural marker. Its appearance in poetry often signals the entrance of an older, more severe moral world — the world of Calvinist Scotland, of hard weather and harder theology.
Also Known As
Stern Hard Severe Grim
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