Douce
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /duËs/
Origin
From Old French dolz, dous, Middle French doux, douce, from Latin dulcis ("sweet").
Full definition of douce
Adjective
douce
- (obsolete) Sweet, nice, pleasant.
- (dialect) Serious and quiet; steady, not flighty or casual; sober.
- 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?