(a.) Hard; inflexible; obstinate; sour in aspect; hardy; bold.
Example Sentences:
(1) Reports from the scenes of Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party rallies conveyed a dour mood in Cairo, while active clashes were reported in both coastal cities and upper Egypt.
(2) There’s hard work and dour activities and that’s what I’m going to be doing.” Corbyn and his deputy, Tom Watson , are expected to make regular – and more public – visits to Scotland to help Scottish Labour avoid a further rout at next May’s Holyrood elections; the latest opinion polls suggest the SNP is on course to win a second successive overall majority with its approval ratings at more than 50%.
(3) However, as we watch Blade Runner , Deckard doesn’t feel like a replicant; he is dour and unengaged, but lacks his victims’ detached innocence, their staccato puzzlement at their own untrained feelings.
(4) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
(5) The dour Zenawi could not resist a swipe at western pundits who had once written off Africa.
(6) A spectacular fall from grace on the pitch – from first to seventh, playing dour football that is anathema to fans who feasted on success throughout the Ferguson era – will also lead to renewed scrutiny of the club's controversial US owners, the Glazer family , away from it.
(7) The seafront was grey and almost deserted; outside the dour concrete venue, there was a single delegate having a blustery cigarette.
(8) But it was in westerns that Peck's dour integrity showed itself best: unshaven and tough in Yellow Sky (1948); a dude learning to adapt to the west in The Big Country (1958); and obsessively after the men who raped and killed his wife in The Bravados (1958).
(9) On Tuesday, the bunkhouse breakfast room felt like a hunting lodge, with wives and girlfriends serving meals while working-class men with beards, flannel shirts and dour expressions milled about.
(10) Milosevic himself, until then a dour and orthodox communist, appeared to realise his gift for rhetoric and the power of nationalism.
(11) Saki (Hector Hugh Munro, 1870-1916) was raised by his strict, dour aunts and grandmother, and was gay but closeted all his life – for good reason, since homosexual acts between men were still illegal.
(12) Fun is fun, and please don't try and stop people having fun, things are dour enough as it is."
(13) Because there is no ‘message’ – there’s just Jeremy!” Membership Event: Guardian Live | The future of Labour: meet the next leader By the end of the night, even the dour stewards were applauding.
(14) This late action made the preceding dour fare seem all the more disappointing.
(15) We were told he would be the dour, humourless lefty; and again he has been a challenge to expectations.
(16) We talk some more about Mad Men , about: "The swirl and sound and fury of it… For a show that is as dour and moody and pendulous as ours, we have fun."
(17) George averaged only 14.5 points and six rebounds in the first two games of the series and started slowly against on Friday before gathering pace in the dour encounter.
(18) The two TV presenters broadcasting from the crowd – she in a gold-spangled minidress and rigid curls, him dour in black tie – shot baleful looks in his direction as he carried on honking.
(19) Murray is a bit dour true to his Scottish nature but he is an excellent player.
(20) Jeremy Corbyn conceded that it would not be easy to revive Labour’s position in Scotland but promised “hard work and dour activities” as he made his first visit to the nation since his election as party leader.
Tawdry
Definition:
(superl.) Bought at the festival of St. Audrey.
(superl.) Very fine and showy in colors, without taste or elegance; having an excess of showy ornaments without grace; cheap and gaudy; as, a tawdry dress; tawdry feathers; tawdry colors.
(n.) A necklace of a rural fashion, bought at St. Audrey's fair; hence, a necklace in general.
Example Sentences:
(1) The citizenship debate is tawdry, conflated and ultimately pointless | Richard Ackland Read more On Wednesday, the prime minister criticised lawyers for backing terrorists.
(2) Writing in the Observer under the headline "Michael Gove, using history for politicking is tawdry" , Hunt seethes, "the government is using what should be a moment for national reflection and respectful debate to rewrite the historical record and sow political division."
(3) The BBC presenter confided to the Radio Times that he shares widespread public disdain for the "tawdry pretences" of modern politicians and the "green-bench pantomime" of Westminster politics.
(4) They were already emboldened by the tawdry campaign of fear used to stop Scottish independence.
(5) Rudd's "zero tolerance" for corruption, and his "disgust" for the tawdry shenanigans in NSW, were in the news cycle before the Icac recommendations – a deliberate bit of media management.
(6) Garvey finished with this somewhat tangential attack: "There are a lot of people who feel that Britain is a bit tawdry," going on to list its seamier side – reality telly, 24-hour drinking, a lapdancing club on every street corner, a Radio 5 Live presenter doing Woman's Hour (that last is my input) … "There are many people who have an asbo and the family are rather chuffed," she said.
(7) I wear a hijab and that’s going to be a problem, but once one person is able to do that, it then allows other people to dream too.” Though the never-ending campaign cycle and tawdry political fighting can breed apathy and disinterest in the American political process, Omar’s family fought for political representation, engendering in Omar a deep enthusiasm and optimism about the importance of the vote.
(8) This tawdry friendship of convenience, these pageants, lies and unethical compromises, may benefit Cameron and Xi, but they are an insult to the citizens of Britain, who cherish their hard-fought freedoms, and to those in China , who are still struggling courageously to achieve them.
(9) The prime minister who once promised a new politics is revealed as a shameless practitioner of the tawdry old art of government by patronage.
(10) Yesterday Bin Hammam claimed the allegations were a "tawdry manoeuvre" to discredit him ahead of the election, claiming for the first time the money was for administrative costs and travel expenses.
(11) It has become a symbol of intolerance, it faces a court battle with the federal government, and it has exemplified that most un-southern quality: tawdriness.
(12) Warrant suggests federal police are investigating Mal Brough over diary leak Read more Dreyfus, the shadow attorney general, told parliament the Australian people deserved answers about Brough’s “grubby” role in “one of the most tawdry episodes” of the Tony Abbott era.
(13) That is the tawdry secret that dare not speak its name."
(14) Since his conviction, politicians from all sides of the chamber have been, as the BBC always says, "united in their condemnation" of Walker and his tawdry struggle to hang on to his job and his £58,000 salary when he ought instead to have resigned immediately.
(15) "Press regulation is too important an issue to be answered by some tawdry deal cooked up at two in the morning in Ed Miliband's office," he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme on Tuesday.
(16) Bin Hammam, who previously labelled the investigation into the allegations a "tawdry manoeuvre" aimed at destabilising his election campaign, earlier muttered still more darkly.
(17) This apparently tawdry and peripheral form contains a hallucinatory history of the modern self.
(18) "It's getting a bit desperate isn't it when a club make an announcement that they've not had any interest in their players, trying to give the impression that they disapprove of the entire tawdry business.
(19) This is slightly disingenuous – in January, he and Trudie, his film-producer wife of 18 years and mother to four of his six children, gave a joint interview to Harper's Bazaar in which he claimed: "I don't think pedestrian sex is very interesting… we like tawdry."
(20) And the FA itself might finally recognise its responsibility to football’s fans and lead a boycott of Fifa , withdrawing in all but name from the committees and procedures of the tawdry, discredited outfit that represents the world’s favourite game.