Douce vs Douse - What's the difference?
douce | douse |
(obsolete) Sweet, nice, pleasant.
(dialect) Serious and quiet; steady, not flighty or casual; sober.
* 1932 , (Lewis Grassic Gibbon), Sunset Song'', Polygon 2006 (''A Scots Quair ), p. 27:
* 1992 , (Hilary Mantel), A Place of Greater Safety , Harper Perennial 2007, p. 145:
* 1996 , (Alasdair Gray), ‘The Story of a Recluse’, Canongate 2012 (Every Short Story 1951-2012 ), p. 271:
(ambitransitive) To plunge suddenly into water; to duck; to immerse.
To fall suddenly into water.
To put out; to extinguish.
To strike.
(nautical) To strike or lower in haste; to slacken suddenly; as, douse the topsail.
As an adjective douce
is (obsolete) sweet, nice, pleasant.As a verb douse is
(ambitransitive) to plunge suddenly into water; to duck; to immerse or douse can be to strike.As a noun douse is
a blow; stroke.douce
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- 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?
Derived terms
* doucely * douceness ----douse
English
Etymology 1
Probably of (etyl) origin, related to (etyl) and (douse) below.Alternative forms
*Verb
- (Hudibras)