Crossword Dictionary
sullen, dour, dorty, morose, sullener, sullenly, sullenest, solein - a
showing a brooding ill humor or resentment
Dour describes something sullen, gloomy, or persistent. You might look dour on your way to picking up your last check from the job you just got fired from, and people should get out of your way.
Dour and endure most likely come from the Latin word durus which means "hard." If something is hard to endure for a long enough time, it can make even the most happy-go-lucky person dour. Dour sounds like sour (or closer to "do-er"). It's a tomato/tamahto word, but either way — if you're in a sour mood, you have no sense of humor, and you're dour.
dour
dour, forbidding, grim - a
harshly uninviting or formidable in manner or appearance; "a dour, self-sacrificing life"; "a forbidding scowl"; "a grim man loving duty more than humanity"; "undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw"- J.M.Barrie
synonyms
austere, fierce, flinty, forbidding, grim, gruff, intimidating, lowering (also louring), rough, rugged, severe, stark, steely, stern, ungentle
in a sentence
She had a dour expression on her face.
the dour mood of the crowd
Will our dour mood drag the economy down
etymology
mid-14c., "severe" (of grief); late 14c., of men, "bold, stern, fierce," a word from Scottish and northern England dialect, probably directly from Latin durus "hard," from PIE *dru-ro-, suffixed variant form of root *deru- "be firm, solid, steadfast." Sense of "gloomy, sullen" is late 15c. Related: Dourness.