Tiresome

How to spell tiresome

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tiresome

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tiresome mean?

1. adjectiveCausing boredom, weariness, or irritation; tedious and wearisome to deal with.

Tiresome in a sentence

• The long commute became tiresome after only a few weeks.

• Filling in the same forms every month is a tiresome chore.

Where does tiresome come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a native English formation built from the verb 'tire', meaning to grow weary or to exhaust, which descends from the Old English 'teorian', 'to fail or become weary'. To it was added the productive suffix '-some', from Old English '-sum', meaning 'tending to' or 'characterised by', the same ending found in 'wholesome', 'troublesome', and 'burdensome'. Put together the parts literally describe something that tends to wear you out, and from the late 1400s the word settled into the sense of something tedious, dull, or irritating to deal with. The spelling trap is the silent 'e' that survives from 'tire' in the middle of the word, since 'tire' plus '-some' keeps that 'e' to give 'tiresome' rather than the tempting 'tirsome'.

How the word is built

• tire (to weary, exhaust)
• -some (adjective suffix: tending to cause)