devoirとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

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

発音

• IPA: /dəˈvwɑː/
• 韻: -ɑː
• ハイフネーション: de‧voir

名詞

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!

アナグラム

• voider

名詞

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)

派生した語

• English: devoir