douce
adjUK /duːs/
Etymology From Middle English douce, from Old French dolz, dous, Middle French doux, douce, from Latin dulcis (“sweet”). Doublet of dolce, doux, and dulce.
1
Sweet; nice; pleasant.
- Beyond the bed stood the woman. Dark and pale, aged about twenty-one . . . his mother, Mary de Bohun. Death had stolen none of her douce beauty and sweetness.1978, Rosemary Hawley Jarman, “Part Four: The Treaty: France and England, 1420–22”, in Crown in Candlelight, London: Book Club Associates, →OCLC, page 314:
- The sun broke through the cloods, and the douce song o’ a laverock filled me wi’ gledness.2012 September 29, “The Times young poets of the year”, in The Times, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, Weekend section, page 6:
2
Dialectal Serious and quiet; steady, not flighty or casual; sober.
- The bookseller, douce man, had seen too many eccentric customers to be shocked by the vehemence of his questioner.1919, Christopher Morley, “The Battle of Ludlow Street”, in The Haunted Bookshop, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 242:
- 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?1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 27:
2 more examples
- 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.1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, page 145:
- 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?1996, Alasdair Gray, “The Story of a Recluse”, in Every Short Story 1951-2012, Canongate, published 2012, page 271:
- Related terms
- flute-douce, powder-douce