due course

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English

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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due course (usually uncountable, plural due courses)

  1. (idiomatic) Regular or appropriate passage or occurrence
    • 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):
      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.
    • 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):
      This is all according to the due Course of Things: []
    • 1803 (date written), [Jane Austen], Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. [], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, [], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC:
      [] 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; []
    • 1898, Justin McCarthy, The Story of Gladstone's Life, page 27:
      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, []
    • 1985 [1387–1400], Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by David Wright, The Canterbury Tales[1], The Franklin's Tale:
      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.

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