Definition of "devoir"
devoir
noun
plural devoirs
(archaic, often in plural) Duty, business; something that one must do.
Quotations
[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.
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), page 73
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!
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
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!
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