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The Long and Uneventful History of Tedious
Words frequently change their meanings, and some even will go from meaning one thing to meaning something almost opposite (such as nice, which in its earliest use meant "lewd, wanton, dissolute"). Tedious is not one of these words; its meanings may have shifted over the centuries, but they have always had something to do with irksome, boring, or overlong things. The word comes from the Latin taedēre, meaning “to disgust or weary.” Tedious has been in use since the 15th century and has been included in hundreds of dictionaries, although perhaps none have rendered so poetic and succinct a definition as Nathaniel Bailey’s entry in his 1756 New Universal Etymological English Dictionary: “Wearisome by continuance.”
Examples of tedious in a Sentence
Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, 16 June 1994
Another of their assignments was to slow-fly any plane that had a new engine to break it in; that meant flying the aircraft for a tedious hour-and-a-half as slowly as it would possibly go without falling out of the sky.
—Doris Weatherford, American Women and World War II, 1990
From there, it became clear that the deposition was going to be neither as undramatic nor as quotidian, and even tedious, as it at first appeared.
—Renata Adler, New Yorker, June 23, 1986
He made a tedious 45-minute speech.
The work is tedious, but it needs to get done.
Keith Matheny, Freep.com, 14 July 2025
As seen only in the episodes, the major arcs of this season of Love Island have been tedious to the point of boredom.
—Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 9 July 2025
These are tedious decisions that take institutional knowledge, care and urgency.
—Meera Joshi, New York Daily News, 8 July 2025
Luscious lawns, blooming gardens, flower beds, and even walkways are all prone to weeds like crabgrass, dandelions, and clover, which leaves us with the tedious task of pulling them out one by one.
—Alicia Geigel, Southern Living, 7 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for tedious
Cite this Entry
“Tedious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tedious. Accessed 21 Jul. 2025.
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