dour

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.
• Hayek had contributed the foreword, in which he declared that “he got so fascinated” by the book—high praise from the dour Viennese sage—that he read it from start to finish in one sitting.

Unyielding and obstinate.

Expressing gloom or melancholy.

Alternative form of daur.alt-ofalternative

• 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.