devoir

From Middle English devoir, borrowed from Middle French devoir, from Old French deveir, from Latin dēbēre (“to owe; ought, must”).

• IPA^(key): /dəˈvwɑː/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː
• Hyphenation: de‧voir

devoir (plural devoirs)

1. (archaic, often in plural) Duty, business; something that one must do.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio, The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC, page 149:

     […] he imprint not so much in his schollers mind […] where Marcellus died, as because he was unworthy of his devoire he died there […].

   • 1787, “A female” [pseudonym; Winifred Marshall Gales], The History of Lady Emma Melcombe, and Her Family. By a Female. In Three Volumes, volume III, London: Printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, →OCLC, page 155:

     I should have long ere this paid my devoirs to the inhabitants of Raymond Castle.

   • 1836 July, “London Fashionable Chit-Chat”, in The Lady's Magazine and Museum of the Belles-lettres, Fine Arts, Music, Drama, Fashions, &c. (Improved Series. Enlarged.), volume IX, London: Dobbs & Co., Hemlock Court, Carey Street, Lincolns Inn (Formerly at 112, Fetter Lane), →OCLC, page 73:

     [M]y eyes were oft times [on the] charmante maitresse de la maison, who glided among her guests in her flowing Spanish mantilla, and train of the clearest blonde, doing her devoirs with winning kindness, and showing how much benevolence of manner adds to beauty.

   • 1873 March, H[enry] James Jr., “The Madonna of the Future”, in The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, volume XXXI, number CLXXXV, Boston, Mass.: James R. Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood & Co., page 277:

     A young man who arrives at Florence late in the evening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging over the travellers' book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay his devoirs to the Beautiful, is a young man after my own heart!

   • 1885, Richard F[rancis] Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Benares [false, actually Stoke Newington, London]: Kamashastra Society, →OCLC:

     Then quoth the portress to the mistress of the house, "O my lady, arise and go to thy place that I in turn may do my devoir."

   • 1983, Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian, or Ruling Passions (The Avignon Quintet; 4), London; Boston, Mass.: Faber & Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-13111-2; republished in The Avignon Quintet, London: Faber & Faber, 2004, ISBN 978-0-571-22555-2, page 1057:

     That is the little bit of essential information which enables us to complete our devoir – without it we are just ordinary people, dispossessed, taken unawares: the original sin!

• voider

Inherited from Middle French debvoir, from Old French deveir, from Latin dēbēre (to owe; ought, must).

• IPA^(key): /də.vwaʁ/, (informal) /dvwaʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -waʁ

devoir m (plural devoirs)

1. duty

   manquer à son devoir, manquer à tous ses devoirs ― to fail in one's duty, duties

   Il est de mon devoir de protéger le roi. ― It is my duty to protect the king.

2. exercise, assignment (set for homework)

• devoir de mémoire
• devoir sur table
• devoir surveillé
• devoir une fière chandelle
• le devoir m’appelle
• sentiment du devoir accompli

devoir

1. must, to have to, should (as a requirement)

   Les auteurs d’un dictionnaire doivent déterminer au départ les catégories de mots à retenir, en fonction des limites imposées par l’éditeur et du public visé.

   The authors of a dictionary have to determine from the outset which categories of words to retain, according to the limits imposed by the editor, and the target audience.

   • 2014, Jean-Claude Bernardon, Résolution de conflits:

     Votre langage doit vous permettre de maintenir une bonne distance de sécurité, être un peu plus poli et détaché que nécessaire est un avantage.

     Your language should permit you to keep a fairly secure distance, [as] being slightly more formal and detached than necessary is an advantage.

   1. (present) must
   2. (conditional) should
2. must, to do or have with certainty
3. (transitive) to owe (money, obligation and etc)
4. (literary, intransitive, in imperfect subjunctive, with inversion of subject) (even) if it is necessary (+ infinitive)
   • 1842, George Sand, Consuelo:

     Eh bien, se dit-elle, j’irai, dussé-je affronter les dangers réels [...].

     Well, she said to herself, I'll go, even if I have to face real danger.

5. (reflexive, ~ de) to have a duty to
   • 1791, Louis XVI, “Message du roi, à l'Assemblée nationale, le 13 septembre 1791 [Message of the King to the National Assembly on 13 September 1791]”, in Constitution française, présentée au roi par l'Assemblée nationale, le 3 septembre 1791 [French constitution, presented to the King by the National Assembly on 3 September 1791], Dijon: Imprimerie de P. Causse, page 75:

     Aujourd’hui je dois aux intérêts de la nation, je me dois à moi-même de faire connoître mes motifs.

     Today, I owe to the interests of the nation, [so] I owe it to myself to make my motives known.

• The circumflex accent applied to the u in the past participle dû serves only to distinguish it from the prepositive du (“of the”). As such, the circumflex is omitted in the participle's other inflections: due f sg, dus m pl, dues f pl. The diacritic is likewise omitted in the derived adjective indu (“undue, unwarranted”) and its inflected forms, but retained in the adverbial derivative dûment and indûment, where it serves as an etymological marker signaling the elision of the letter e from the older spelling duement. These latter, however, may be rendered dument and indument according to the orthographic reforms advanced by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française and approved by the Académie française in 1990.
• In negative constructions (e.g. ne pas devoir and ne plus devoir), the sense becomes "must not," "should not", etc.

  Je dois y aller. ― I must go. / I have to go.

  Je ne dois pas y aller. ― I must not go.

  Ne devriez-vous pas vous en aller ? ― Shouldn't you go away?

  Ça ne devrait plus vous poser de problèmes.

  That should no longer pose any problems.

• (dû)
  • indu
  • dûment
    • indûment
• redevoir

• chose promise, chose due
• comme il se doit
• en bonne et due forme

• redevable

• falloir
• obliger

• “devoir”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from Middle French devoir, from Old French devoir, deveir, from Latin dēbēre (“to owe, to be duty bound to do something”).

devoir (plural devoirs)

1. devoir
   • 1479, William Caxton, De Consolatione Philosophiæ, translated into English by Geoffrey Chaucer:

     I William Caxton have done my devoir to enprint it

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• English: devoir

• deveir (archaic or regional)
• deoir (verb)

From Latin dēbēre.

• (archaic) IPA^(key): /dəˈvei̯ɾ/
• (classical) IPA^(key): /dəˈvoi̯ɾ/, (northern) /dəˈvei̯ɾ/
• (late) IPA^(key): /dəˈvo̯ɛɾ/, (northern) /dəˈveɾ/

devoir

1. (modal) to have to; must
2. to owe

This verb conjugates as a third-group verb. This verb has a stressed present stem doiv distinct from the unstressed stem dev, as well as other irregularities. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

• The trema on the u of the past participle deü is not used by all authors.
• The feminine forms of the past participle are more commonly spelled due and dues, though deue and deues are attested.

devoir oblique singular, m (oblique plural devoirs, nominative singular devoirs, nominative plural devoir)

1. debt

• Angevin: devair
• Gallo: devair
• Lorrain: devor
• Middle French: debvoir (see there for further descendants)
• Norman: deveir
• Picard: dvoér
• Walloon: diveur

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (devoir)
• “Appendix E: Irregular Verbs” in E. Einhorn (1974), Old French: A Concise Handbook, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, pages 152–153