boredom

Etymology

From bore +‎ -dom.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɔː.dəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈbɔɹ.dəm/

Noun

boredom (usually uncountable, plural boredoms)

1. (uncountable) The state of being bored.
   • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter XII, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC:

     […] only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.

2. (countable) An instance or period of being bored; A bored state.
   • 1995, Martin Heidegger, William McNeill, Nicholas Walker, transl., The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, page 107:

     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.

   • 1999, Michael L. Raposa, Boredom and the Religious Imagination‎, page 58:

     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.

   • See more citations at boredoms.

Anagrams

• bed-room, bedroom, broomed