Meanings
plural due courses
- 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), →OCLCThe 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 27You 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
due course. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/due%20course
“due course.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/due%20course. Accessed November 3, 2026.
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.