Wiktionary

onerous

English

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Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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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], chapter 13, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC:
      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

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English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₃enh₂-‎ (0 c, 21 e)

Translations

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Middle English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ɔnɛˈruːs/, /ɔˈnɛrus/

Adjective

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onerous

  1. (Late Middle English) onerous

Descendants

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  • English: onerous

References

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