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boredom

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From bore +‎ -dom.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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boredom (usually uncountable, plural boredoms)

  1. (uncountable) The state of being bored. [from 1831][1]
    • 1831, [Benjamin Disraeli], chapter V, in The Young Duke. […], volume II (book III), London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 57:
      The House had just broke up, and the political members had just entered, and in clusters, some standing, and some yawning, some stretching their arms, and some stretching their legs, presented symptoms of an escape from boredom.
    • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, “On the Watch”, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 108:
      [O]nly last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
  2. (countable) An instance or period of being bored; a bored state.
    • 1995, Martin Heidegger, William McNeill, Nicholas Walker, transl., The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, page 107:
      If we are seeking a more original conception of boredom then we must also correspondingly endeavour to envisage a more original form of boredom, thus presumably a boredom in which we become more bored than in the situation we have characterized.
    • 1999, Michael L. Raposa, Boredom and the Religious Imagination‎[1], page 58:
      Yet that earlier characterization was of a kind of boredom that can be portrayed as resembling acedia; that is, a boredom that I can be held responsible for, either in its genesis or its persistence.
    • See more citations at boredoms.
  3. (obsolete, rare) The state of being a bore. [from 1829][1]
    Synonym: boreism
    • 1829 June 6, “Autobiography of an Opera Ticket”, in Court Journal, page 84, column 1; republished in The Albion […], volume 8, number 9, New York, N.Y., 8 August 1829, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 69, column 2:
      Neither will I follow another precedental mode of boredom, and indulge in a laudatory apostrophe to the destinies which presided over my fashioning.
    • 1864 February 10, Realm, page 1; quoted in “Boredom (bōᵊ·ɹdəm)”, in James A[ugustus] H[enry] Murray [et al.], editors, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volumes I (A–B), London: Clarendon Press, 1884–1928, →OCLC, page 1003, column 1:
      The complete art of boredom.
    • [1879], George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “[Impressions of Theophrastus Such.] Diseases of Small Authorship.”, in Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Essays and Leaves from a Note-book, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, pages 148–149:
      My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, was most common to the female sex; but I presently found that here too the male could assert his superiority and show a more vigorous boredom. I have known a man with a single pamphlet containing an assurance that somebody else was wrong, together with a few approved quotations, produce a more powerful effect of shuddering at his approach than ever Vorticella did with her varied octavo volume, including notes and appendix.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “boredom, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Anagrams

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