Tedious

How to spell tedious

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tedious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tedious mean?

1. adjectiveToo long, slow, or dull, in a way that makes you weary or impatient.

Tedious in a sentence

• Filling in the expense forms by hand is a tedious chore.

• The meeting became tedious once the speaker started repeating himself.

Where does tedious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun taedium, which meant weariness or boredom, the same root that gives us the modern word 'tedium'. That noun came from the verb taedere, meaning 'to weary' or 'to disgust', describing the dull, draining feeling of something dragging on far too long. Late Latin formed the adjective taediosus, 'wearisome', and English picked it up through Old French in the early 1400s. The sense has stayed remarkably stable for six centuries: something tedious still tires you out by being long, repetitive, and dull. The spelling trap lives in the middle, where the unstressed '-ious' ending sounds like a single squashed syllable, tempting writers to drop the second 'i' or to reach for an '-eous' ending instead.

How the word is built

• tedi- (from Latin taedium: weariness, boredom)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)