due course

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due course (usually uncountable, plural due courses)

1. (idiomatic) Regular or appropriate passage or occurrence
   • 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “(please specify the story)”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:

     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.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

   • 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: […]

   • 1817 December​, [Jane Austen], Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], 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, […]

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:due course.

• in due course