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IRKSOME
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
So lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness
Example:
other people's dreams are dreadfully wearisome
Synonyms:
boring; deadening; dull; ho-hum; irksome; slow; tedious; tiresome; wearisome
Classified under:
Similar:
uninteresting (arousing no interest or attention or curiosity or excitement)
Context examples:
And Amy, in her exile, longed eagerly to be at home, that she might work for Beth, feeling now that no service would be hard or irksome, and remembering, with regretful grief, how many neglected tasks those willing hands had done for her.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
I wish you could have heard her honouring your forbearance, in being able to pay her such attentions, as she was for ever receiving from yourself and your father, when her society must be so irksome.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I should have been extremely happy, Copperfield, to have limited these charges to the actual expenditure out of pocket, but it is an irksome incident in my professional life, that I am not at liberty to consult my own wishes.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
In his departure Sir Thomas felt the chief interest: wanting to be alone with his family, the presence of a stranger superior to Mr. Yates must have been irksome; but of him, trifling and confident, idle and expensive, it was every way vexatious.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
We have certainly done our best; and most fortunately having it in our power to introduce you to very superior society, and, from our connection with Rosings, the frequent means of varying the humble home scene, I think we may flatter ourselves that your Hunsford visit cannot have been entirely irksome.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude hours upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss Murdstone should complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my restlessness, and afraid to move an eye lest she should light on some look of dislike or scrutiny that would find new cause for complaint in mine!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
She did not mention this meeting at home (though she discovered that, thanks to the upset, her new dress was much damaged by the rivulets of dressing that meandered down the skirt), but went through with the preparations which now seemed more irksome than before, and at twelve o'clock all was ready again.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The shutting of the gates regularly at ten o’clock and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
