due course

noun

Regular or appropriate passage or occurrence

Meanings

noundue course (usually uncountable, plural due courses)

plural due courses

  1. idiomaticuncountableusuallyRegular or appropriate passage or occurrence

    This is all according to the due Course of Things: […]

    1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms)
    4 more examples

    Let us be cleared / Of being tyrannous, since we so openly / Proceed in justice, which shall have due course, / Even to the guilt or the purgation.

    c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

    […] but it did not oppress them by any means so long; and, after a due course of useless conjecture, that “it was a strange business, and that he must be a very strange man,” grew enough for all their indignation and wonder; […]

    1803 (date written), [Jane Austen], Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC

    The Reform Bill, although the Duke of Wellington described it as " a revolution by due course of law," set up in fact but a very limited suffrage, […]

    1898, Justin McCarthy, The Story of Gladstone's Life, page 27

    You all know that in the due course of time / If you continue scratching on a stone, / Little by little some image thereon / Will he engraven.

    1985 [1387–1400], Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by David Wright, The Canterbury Tales, The Franklin's Tale
Cite this entry
APA

due course. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/due%20course

MLA

“due course.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/due%20course. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “due course,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/due%20course.

Source: due course on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.