Dour adjective hard, stern, severe
‘The schoolmaster was a notably dour sort, and no one’s idea of a congenial traveling companion.’ (A Breath of Snow and Ashes)
The word dour seems to have emerged first in Scots and northern English. Its origin is obscure but is thought possibly to relate to the Latin dūrus ‘hard’, though it may also have come through Celtic and French cognates. However it emerged, the word has become associated with two aspects of Scottish culture: the country’s weather (occasionally, perhaps, justified) and (much more unfairly) its people.
Our earliest citation is from 1375 in the Bruce (of Aberdonian poet John Barbour), where a person is described as ‘a stout carle and a sture, And of him-self dour and hardy’ (determined, resolute, stern, hardy - not entirely negative terms).
However, the Legends of the Saints from only a few years later (c.1400) uses dur to mean obstinate, and by the nineteenth century being dour is not a great look. In Scott’s Heart of Midlothian (1818) Jeanie urges her sister not to be obstinate: ‘O unhappy lassie, dinna be dour, and turn your back on your happiness again!’ And John Galt, in The Provost (1822), offers a characteristic citation: ‘He was … a dure man … no of the right sort … to take up the case of a forlorn lassie’.
Associations with weather and land emerged a bit later; instances, perhaps, of the ‘pathetic fallacy’ whereby climate is taken to reflect human character. In his Poems (1813), George Bruce draws a suitably dismal picture: ‘Angry Boreas [wind] loudly skirling, Drave his blatt’ring hailstanes dour.’
These days, dour most commonly relates to people. Here’s an entertaining example from The Missus (2017): ‘Rab, ma love, he tried tae tell ‘im, That oor marriage wis attested, But faither, that dour, crabbit, blellum, Mynt tae hae ma Rab arrested.’
Other records show ‘dour’ and ‘Scot’ commonly collocated, even by Scots themselves. Ian Rankin, in 1992, describes how Scotsmen: ‘drank in dour silence, merely exchanging looks whenever the Englishman or his two friends said anything.’ (Strip Jack)
There is, then, no escape. Here is a more recent citation, from the late Colleen McCullough’s novel Bittersweet (2015): ‘The headmistress, a dour Scot, welcomed the eleven girls ... with a speech designed to depress their expectations’. Oh dear!