weary

From Middle English wery, weri, from Old English wēriġ, from Proto-Germanic *wōrīgaz, *wōragaz. 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”).

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

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɪəɹi

weary (comparative wearier, superlative weariest)

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

   A weary traveller knocked at the door.

   • 1623, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene IV:

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

   • (Can we date this quote?) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

     [I] am weary, thinking of your task.

   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., 55 Fifth Avenue, [1933], OCLC 2666860, 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.

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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

     weary way

   • (Can we date this quote?) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

     There passed a weary time.

• See also Thesaurus:fatigued

• wearily
• weariness
• wearisome

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

1. To make or to become weary.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

     So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,

   • (Can we date this quote?) Milton

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

   • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet Chapter 4

     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.

• See also Thesaurus:tire

• unwearied
• unwearying

• wary

• Erway