onerous

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɒnəɹəs/, /ˈəʊnəɹəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (Southern England):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɑnəɹəs/, /ˈoʊnəɹəs/

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

• onerously

Related terms

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

Translations

burdensome

• Bulgarian: обременителен (bg) (obremenitelen), затрудняващ (bg) (zatrudnjavašt)
• Catalan: onerós
• Czech: těžký (cs), tíživý, obtížný (cs)
• Dutch: veeleisend (nl), moeilijk (nl), lastig (nl)
• French: onéreux (fr), pénible (fr), lourd (fr)
• German: beschwerlich (de), drückend (de), lästig (de), mühsam (de)
• Italian: oneroso (it), ostico (it)
• Latin: onerōsus
• Maori: taimaha, taumaha, toimaha
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: tyngende

• Polish: uciążliwy (pl)
• Portuguese: oneroso (pt)
• Russian: обременительный (ru) (obremenitelʹnyj), тягостный (ru) (tjagostnyj)
• Serbo-Croatian: tegoban (sh), zamoran (sh)
• Spanish: oneroso (es)
• Swedish: jobbig (sv)
• Turkish: ağır (tr), eziyetli (tr), güç (tr), külfetli (tr), sıkıntılı (tr), zahmetli (tr)
• Ukrainian: обтя́жливий (obtjážlyvyj)

Middle English

Alternative forms

• honerous, onerose, onerouse

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

• “onerǒus, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2019-1-7.