boredom meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

boredom

noun

UK /ˈbɔː.dəm/ · US /ˈbɔɹ.dəm/

Etymology From bore + -dom.

Usually The state of being bored.

The House had just broke up, and the political members had just entered, and in clusters, some standing, and some yawning, some stretching their arms, and some stretching their legs, presented symptoms of an escape from boredom.1831, [Benjamin Disraeli], chapter V, in The Young Duke. […], volume II (book III), London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 57:
[O]nly last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, “On the Watch”, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 108:

Usually An instance or period of being bored; a bored state.

If we are seeking a more original conception of boredom then we must also correspondingly endeavour to envisage a more original form of boredom, thus presumably a boredom in which we become more bored than in the situation we have characterized.1995, Martin Heidegger, William McNeill, Nicholas Walker, transl., The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, page 107:
Yet that earlier characterization was of a kind of boredom that can be portrayed as resembling acedia; that is, a boredom that I can be held responsible for, either in its genesis or its persistence.1999, Michael L. Raposa, Boredom and the Religious Imagination, page 58:

1 more example

Obsolete, Rare, Usually The state of being a bore.

Neither will I follow another precedental mode of boredom, and indulge in a laudatory apostrophe to the destinies which presided over my fashioning.1829 June 6, “Autobiography of an Opera Ticket”, in Court Journal, page 84, column 1; republished in The Albion […], volume 8, number 9, New York, N.Y., 8 August 1829, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 69, column 2:
The complete art of boredom.1864 February 10, Realm, page 1; quoted in “Boredom (bōᵊ·ɹdəm)”, in James A[ugustus] H[enry] Murray [et al.], editors, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volumes I (A–B), London: Clarendon Press, 1884–1928, →OCLC, page 1003, column 1:

1 more example

My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, was most common to the female sex; but I presently found that here too the male could assert his superiority and show a more vigorous boredom. I have known a man with a single pamphlet containing an assurance that somebody else was wrong, together with a few approved quotations, produce a more powerful effect of shuddering at his approach than ever Vorticella did with her varied octavo volume, including notes and appendix.[1879], George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “[Impressions of Theophrastus Such.] Diseases of Small Authorship.”, in Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Essays and Leaves from a Note-book, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, pages 148–149: