taedium

See also: tædium

English

Noun

taedium (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of tedium
   • 1845, J. L. Hilpert, A Dictionary of the English and German, and the German and English Language, volume II, Carlsruhe: Th. Braun, page 777, column 1:

     3) Die Langeweile — , to beguile ennui, the taedium or dullness [of a place &c.] with playing;

   • 1877, F. A. Paley, Aristophanis Ranae. The ‘Frogs’ of Aristophanes, a Revised Text with English Notes, and a Preface, Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co. London: George Bell and Sons, pages 39–40, columns 2–1:

     The procession along the sacred road from Athens to Eleusis (see Wordsworth’s Greece, p. 145) used to wile the taedium of the journey with these banterings, as the ‘Canterbury Pilgrimage’ in the time of Chaucer appears to have done.

   • 1886 September, Prof. Bloombergh, “La Chanson de Roland”, in The Lafayette, volume XII, page 79, columns 1–2:

     Yet if the cure of physical maladies is beyond the physicians prescriptions, we may at least recreate and relieve the mind from the effects of the taedium and ennui arising from the sameness of routine life by transferring ourselves to epochs of thought differing from our own.

   • 1904, Arnold Haultain, “The Mystery of Golf”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 94, page 90:

     Other men I have known to whom a round of Golf was so casual and frivolous a pass-time that they would seek to relieve the taedium of the game (and perhaps entertain you!) by the narration between strokes of interminable and pointless anecdotes.

   • 1941, The New England Quarterly, page 316:

     In the following year it was even rumored in Edinburgh that Waverly was written by Jeffrey “to lighten the taedium of his transatlantic voyage.”

   • 1954, The American Society Legion of Honor Magazine, volume 25, page 354:

     Vanished was the taedium that killed the July Monarchy (“France is bored!”), the listlessness, the shrugging of weary shoulders, the raising of sceptical eyebrows, that were to beset the Third Republic—and the Fourth.

Related terms

• taedium vitae

Latin

Etymology

From taedeō (“I am disgusted”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈtae̯.di.um/, [ˈt̪äe̯d̪iʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈte.di.um/, [ˈt̪ɛːd̪ium]

Noun

taedium n (genitive taediī or taedī); second declension

1. weariness, tedium, boredom, ennui
2. disgust, aversion, repugnance, loathing
3. sadness, grief

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	taedium	taedia
Genitive	taediī taedī1	taediōrum
Dative	taediō	taediīs
Accusative	taedium	taedia
Ablative	taediō	taediīs
Vocative	taedium	taedia

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

Derived terms

• taediōsus

Descendants

• Inherited:
  • Galician: teio, teo
  • Old Romanesco: tiegio
  • Sardinian: teju, teu
• Borrowed:
  • → Catalan: tedi
  • → English: tedium
  • → Galician: tedio
  • → Italian: tedio
  • → Portuguese: tédio
  • → Spanish: tedio

References

• “taedium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “taedium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• taedium in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• taedium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1911) “taedium”, in Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), page 642