Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Money given as a tip, gratuity, or bribe.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Sweetness or mildness of manner; kindness; gentleness.
- n. A conciliatory offering; a present or gift; a reward; a bribe.
- n. A kind or agreeable remark; a compliment.
Wiktionary
- n. Gentleness and sweetness of manner; agreeableness.
- n. A gift for service done or to be done; an honorarium; a present; sometimes, a bribe.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Gentleness and sweetness of manner; agreeableness.
- n. A gift for service done or to be done; an honorarium; a present; sometimes, a bribe.
Etymologies
- French, from Late Latin dulcor, sweetness, from Latin dulcis, sweet. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Give all your motions, too, an air of douceur, which is directly the reverse of their present celerity and rapidity.”
Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
“The "douceur" of their sweet pitifulness towards him runs like a quivering magnetic current through all the maddest fancies of his wayward imagination.”
“It is all but impossible not to wish to stand well with your waiter: I have myself been often treated with conspicuous rudeness by the tribe, yet I have never been able to withhold the 'douceur' that marked me for a gentleman in their eyes, and entitled me to their dishonorable esteem.”
“For God's sake, therefore, now think of nothing but shining, and even distinguishing yourself in the most polite courts, by your air, your address, your manners, your politeness, your 'douceur', your graces.”
“MY DEAR FRIEND: Of all the various ingredients that compose the useful and necessary art of pleasing, no one is so effectual and engaging as that gentleness, that 'douceur' of countenance and manner, to which you are no stranger, though (God knows why) a sworn enemy.”
“This 'douceur' is not so easily described as felt.”
“Give all your motions, too, an air of 'douceur', which is directly the reverse of their present celerity and rapidity.”
“Observe those carefully who have that 'douceur' that charms you and others; and your own good sense will soon enable you to discover the different ingredients of which it is composed.”
“You must be more particularly attentive to this 'douceur', whenever you are obliged to refuse what is asked of you, or to say what in itself cannot be very agreeable to those to whom you say it.”
“To complete this 'douceur' of countenance and motions, which I so earnestly recommend to you, you should carry it also to your expressions and manner of thinking, 'mettez”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘douceur’.
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250 Spelling Words
A selected sampling of words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
orecchiette, rhabdomancy, guayabera, orthoepy, opisthenar, maguey, proem, ciabatta, cioppino, banns, concinnity, asthenia and 237 more...
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phrontistery - d
from phrontistery.info
dacnomania, dacoitage, dacryops, dactylioglyph, dactyliology, dactyliomancy, dactylogram, dactylography, dactyloid, dactylology, dactylomancy, dactylomegaly and 624 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Tricky To Spell or Pronounce
ply, stationary, stationery, monetize, finagle, cartilaginous, apposite, languor, douceur, Umwelt, faze, sequela and 22 more...
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permanent foreign residents in English
Foreign words and phrases that are perfectly acceptable to use in formal English writing, but still maintain the aura of foreignness. They do not enjoy full citizenship, but remain "alien residents...
prima facie, a priori, a posteriori, avant la lettre, corpus delicti, l'esprit de l'esc..., sans-culotte, memento mori, gesamtkunstwerk, amour propre, guru, deja vu and 25 more...
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There's a word for it
catkin, pastiche, badonkadonk, biome, omphaloscopy, pogonophobia, reptation, anathema, xyst, commodify, commoditize, monetize and 69 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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Sense and Sensibility
Words from the book by Jane Austen.
shew, shewn, shewing, shewed, dupe, wither, rambled, extorting, cavil, rap, mildness, controuled and 133 more...
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My Good Words
robust, seeth, uncanny, earnest, palpate, belabor, minx, plaintive, endemic, contingent, henceforth, perfunctory and 92 more...
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Descriptive
The present, the future. Goals, wishes, hopes.
capricious, sericeous, sleek, flawless, charming, skilled, long-haired, versatile, beautiful, witty, fair, thin and 145 more...
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Rognons of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for terms and phrases that don't fit into any of my other lists.
priorship, exigeant, refectory, reestablish, capper, reesed, quar, reprune, orificial, reaming-iron, terminist, terminism and 3097 more...
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discoveries
These are lexical items new to me that I've discovered in actual use (i.e. not in dictionaries, lists, or this site).
Looking back over this list, I haven't the slightest idea what mos...haymow, hawsepipe, stridor, bariatric, autotelic, apotropaic, cyanotype, tourelle, autobody, zudecca, stifado, corbeille and 1073 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1387 more...
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...a list from a notebook...
I found several pages of words in an old notebook. By the looks of it, they were words I learnt some time ago (and subsequently wrote down) from books by Patrick O'Brian and China Mieville, two aut...
trabacaloes, jocosity, ordnance, transom, douceur, purser, nostrum, gaby, sea-lawyer, bowsprit, officious, hobnailed and 124 more...
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Words to Encorporate into Speech
Just a few words to start using in every day speech to stimulate other people's brains.
habiliment, laud, insipid, depravity, reticent, disingenuous, germane, fulminant, dour, jimp, calumniate, disport and 24 more...
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gift smift
donation, lagniappe, endow, knack, bequest, giveaway, bestow, hogmanay, munificent, largesse, bonsella, beneficence and 54 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for douceur.
hernesheir Still, it doesn't quite have the ring that cumshaw has, does it? Dec 12, 2011
michaelt42 According to OED douceur entered English from French late in the 14th century, so that it appears not to have been taken in earlier from Norman French. Dec 12, 2011
chained_bear "Furthermore, at shocking cost in douceurs to the Dutch, he set a band of brilliant Chinese carpenters to work, changing the ordinary carronade-slides to those with an inclined plane to absorb much of the recoil."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 97 Mar 6, 2008