onerous

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

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

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (Southern England):

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

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.

• onerously

• honerous, onerose, onerouse

From Middle French onereux, from Old French onereus, from Latin onerosus.

• IPA^(key): /ɔnɛˈruːs/, /ɔˈnɛrus/

onerous

1. (Late Middle English) onerous

• English: onerous

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