weary

English

Etymology

From Middle English wery, weri, from Old English wēriġ (“weary”), from Proto-West Germanic *wōrīg, *wōrag (“weary”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian wuurich (“weary, tired”), West Frisian wurch (“tired”), Dutch dialectal wurrig (“exhausted”), Old Saxon wōrig (“weary”), Old High German wōrag, wuarag (“drunken”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɪəɹi/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /ˈwiːɹi/
• Hyphenation: wea‧ry
• Rhymes: -ɪəɹi

Adjective

weary (comparative wearier, superlative weariest)

1. Having the strength exhausted by toil or exertion; tired; fatigued.

   A weary traveller knocked at the door.

   • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     I care not for my spirits if my legs were not weary.

   • 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Weariness:

     [I] am weary, thinking of your task.

   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., , , →OCLC, page 0091:

     There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.

   • 2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:

     With the lift in the block still out of order, they climbed the flights and flights of steps. When Dad finally put the key in the front door, both were weary beyond words.

2. Having one's patience, relish, or contentment exhausted; tired; sick.

   soldiers weary of marching, or of confinement;  I grew weary of studying and left the library.

3. Expressive of fatigue.

   He gave me a weary smile.

4. Causing weariness; tiresome.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 39:

     And now she was vppon the weary way,

   • 1797–1798 (date written), [Samuel Taylor Coleridge], “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”, in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, London: J & A Arch, , published 1798, →OCLC:

     There passed a weary time.

   • 1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 284:

     She had to dance all night without resting till break of day […] Old women supported her in the weary task, and they all danced together, arm in arm.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:fatigued

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

weary (third-person singular simple present wearies, present participle wearying, simple past and past participle wearied)

1. To make or to become weary.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:tire

   • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC:

     I would not cease / To wearie him with my assiduous cries.

   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: , London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC:

     His name was Henderland; he spoke with the broad south-country tongue, which I was beginning to weary for the sound of; and besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest.

   • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London, Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934:

     Yet there was no time to be lost if I was ever to get out alive, and so I groped with my hands against the side of the grave until I made out the bottom edge of the slab, and then fell to grubbing beneath it with my fingers. But the earth, which the day before had looked light and loamy to the eye, was stiff and hard enough when one came to tackle it with naked hands, and in an hour's time I had done little more than further weary myself and bruise my fingers.

Derived terms

• unwearied
• unwearying
• weariedly

Translations

See also

• wary

Anagrams

• Erway, Wreay