Burnout
nounA state of deep physical and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged stress or overwork.
How to spell burnout
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce burnout
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does burnout mean?
- nounA state of deep physical and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged stress or overwork.
- nounThe failure of a device, fuse, or engine caused by overheating or excessive use.
Burnout in a sentence
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Months of unpaid overtime pushed half the team toward burnout.
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A sudden voltage spike led to a complete burnout of the motor overnight.
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Her doctor diagnosed burnout and signed her off work for six weeks.
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Engineers traced the power cut to a burnout in the main transformer.
Where does burnout come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Burnout is a transparent compound of two of the oldest words in English, both inherited from Germanic roots through Old English. The verb 'burn' goes back to byrnan, meaning 'to be on fire', and its causative twin bærnan, meaning 'to set on fire', while 'out' comes from ūt, meaning 'away' or 'to a finish'. The phrasal verb 'to burn out' originally described a fire or a candle consuming its fuel until nothing was left, and it was later applied to electrical fuses and machinery that failed by overheating. From the early twentieth century the noun 'burnout' settled into print as the fixed one-word form, and in the 1970s American psychologists adopted it for the emotional and physical exhaustion of overworked people. The spelling is mercifully regular, since both halves are spelled exactly as they sound and join without any change.
How the word is built
- burn (Old English byrnan/bærnan: to be on fire)
- out (Old English ūt: away, to completion)
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