onerous
adjUK /ˈɒnəɹəs/ · US /ˈɑnəɹəs/
Etymology Inherited from Middle English onerous, borrowed from Middle French onereux, from Old French onereus, a learned borrowing from Latin onerosus, from onus (“burden”) + -ōsus. Compare exonerate.
1
Imposing or constituting a physical, mental, or figurative load which can be borne only with effort; burdensome.
- 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.1820, Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
- Again, and more intensely than ever, she desired a fixed occupation,—no matter how onerous, how irksome.1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Further Communications on Business”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 45:
4 more examples
- [I]t has become an onerous duty, a wearisome and distasteful task.1910, Jack London, “The Golden Poppy”, in Revolution and Other Essays:
- 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.1945 January and February, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 13:
- However, given current sensibilities about individual privacy and data protection, the recording of oral data is becoming increasingly onerous for researchers[.]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:
- People with diabetes mellitus rely predominantly on finger pricking to measure blood levels of glucose, which can be onerous.2024 June, “A novel system for non-invasive measurement of blood levels of glucose”, in Nature Reviews Endocrinology, volume 20, →DOI, page 320:
- Derived terms
- nononerous, onerosity, onerously, onerousness, unonerous