- dull; unresponsive, listless, inactive, melancholic. Scots are not impressed by an air of well-bred boredom as we read in Sarah Tytler’s The Macdonald Lass (1895): . . . her guests were compelled to come to the conclusion that the fine lady had been attacked by the vapours, so “dowf” was she in her stateliness.
This man was in a bad way: Now grown mauchless, dowf and sweer aye To look near his farm or wark (Edinburgh Magazine March 1795), and it would have been an uphill job to flirt with Strathfallan who, according to David Davidson’s Thoughts on the Seasons, (1789) was as douf to love As an auld cabbage runt [dried up stalk].