douce
See also: ďouče
English
Etymology
From Middle English douce, from Old French dolz, dous, Middle French doux, douce, from Latin dulcis (“sweet”).
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /duːs/
Audio (UK) (file) - Rhymes: -uːs
Adjective
douce (comparative more douce, superlative most douce)
- (obsolete) Sweet; nice; pleasant.
- (dialect) Serious and quiet; steady, not flighty or casual; sober.
- 1919, Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, OCLC 57198313, page 242:
- The bookseller, douce man, had seen too many eccentric customers to be shocked by the vehemence of his questioner.
- 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, Polygon 2006 (A Scots Quair), p. 27:
- what would you say of a man with plenty of silver that bided all by his lone and made his own bed and did his own baking when he might have had a wife to make him douce and brave?
- 1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial 2007, p. 145:
- If Fabre, for example, were elected to the Academy tomorrow, you would see his lust for social revolution turning overnight into the most douce and debonair conformity.
- 1996, Alasdair Gray, ‘The Story of a Recluse’, Canongate 2012 (Every Short Story 1951-2012), p. 271:
- So what strong lord of misrule can preside in this douce, commercially respectable, late 19th century city where even religious fanaticism reinforces un adventurous mediocrity?
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Derived terms
- doucely
- douceness
Related terms
- powder-douce
French
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /dus/
Audio (Paris) (file) - Rhymes: -us
Adjective
douce
- feminine singular of doux
Anagrams
- coude, coudé
Middle English
Alternative forms
- douse, dowce, dowse
Etymology
Borrowed from Old French dolz, douz, douce, from Latin dulcis.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /duːs/
Adjective
douce
- pleasant, sweet, nice, kind
- sweet to the taste
Derived terms
- doucen
- doucet
- dousour
- egurdouce
Descendants
- English: douce
- Scots: douce
References
- “dǒuce, adj. & n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-11.
Noun
douce
- (rare) lover
References
- “dǒuce, adj. & n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-11.