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onerous

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

From Middle English onerous, from Middle French onereux, from Old French onereus, from Latin onerosus (“burdensome”), from onus (“load”). Compare exonerate.

Pronunciation

Adjective

onerous (comparative more onerous, superlative most onerous)

  1. Imposing or constituting a physical, mental, or figurative load which can be borne only with effort; burdensome.
    Synonyms: burdensome, demanding, difficult, taxing, wearing
    • 1820, Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
      That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable.
    • 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Further Communications on Business”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 45:
      Again, and more intensely than ever, she desired a fixed occupation,—no matter how onerous, how irksome.
    • 1910, Jack London, “The Golden Poppy”, in Revolution and Other Essays:
      [I]t has become an onerous duty, a wearisome and distasteful task.
    • 1945 January and February, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 13:
      The striker's job was onerous, too, because there was so little "give" in the metal, and the perpetual jarring was indeed trying to the muscles.
    • 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 11:
      However, given current sensibilities about individual privacy and data protection, the recording of oral data is becoming increasingly onerous for researchers[.]
    • 2024 June, “A novel system for non-invasive measurement of blood levels of glucose”, in Nature Reviews Endocrinology, volume 20, →DOI, page 320:
      People with diabetes mellitus rely predominantly on finger pricking to measure blood levels of glucose, which can be onerous.

Derived terms

English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₃enh₂- (0 c, 22 e)

Translations

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Middle English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle French onereux, from Old French onereus, from Latin onerosus.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɔnɛˈruːs/, /ɔˈnɛrus/

Adjective

onerous

  1. (Late Middle English) onerous

Descendants

  • English: onerous

References

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