weigh on

English

Verb

weigh on (third-person singular simple present weighs on, present participle weighing on, simple past and past participle weighed on)

1. (figuratively) To cause distress to or impose a burden on; to trouble.
   • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volume II, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 206:

     She had got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight, and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, [...]

   • 1856, Charles Kingsley, “Prefatory Memoir”, in Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet:

     The Crimean war weighed on him like a nightmare.

   • 1917, Edith Wharton, chapter VIII, in Summer […], New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 119:

     Her shame weighed on her like a physical oppression: the roof and walls seemed to be closing in on her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away, under the open sky, where there would be room to breathe.

   • 2013 October 26, Sarah Rainey, “Victoria Hislop interview”, in Telegraph, UK, retrieved 9 January 2018:

     [H]er cat [...] has been missing for two days, she tells me, and his unexplained absence has been weighing on her mind.

   • 2017 November 15, Ana Swanson, “Trump’s Trade Approach Diverges Sharply from Free Trade Republicans”, in New York Times, retrieved 9 January 2018:

     Lance Fritz, the president and C.E.O. of Union Pacific Railroad, said pulling out of Nafta would harm trade, which would in turn weigh on his business.