douce — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Sweet; nice; pleasant.

   Examples

   Beyond the bed stood the woman. Dark and pale, aged about twenty-one . . . his mother, Mary de Bohun. Death had stolen none of her douce beauty and sweetness.

   The sun broke through the cloods, and the douce song o’ a laverock filled me wi’ gledness.

2. Serious and quiet; steady, not flighty or casual; sober.

   Usage

   • dialectal

   Examples

   The bookseller, douce man, had seen too many eccentric customers to be shocked by the vehemence of his questioner.

   More examples (3)

   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?

   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.

   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?