Word of the Day

: July 12, 2017

onerous

adjective AH-nuh-rus

What It Means

1 : involving, imposing, or constituting a burden : troublesome

2 : having legal obligations that outweigh the advantages

onerous in Context

"Payroll is a complex set of data and tasks. It requires as much simplicity in terms of user interface and navigation as developers can manage..... Every payroll service I've reviewed this year does a good job of simplifying this onerous process." — David Harsanyi, The Times Record News (Wichita Falls, Texas), 12 Mar. 2016

"Seems to me that, to be a superfood, a food's got to deliver more than nutrients. It has to be cheap, versatile, good-tasting, not too onerous to prepare and not so perishable that you end up tossing it." — Tamar Haspel, The Oregonian, 7 June 2017

Did You Know?

Onerous, which traces back to the Latin onus, meaning "burden," has several synonyms. Like onerous, burdensome, oppressive, and exacting all refer to something which imposes a hardship of some kind. Onerous stresses a sense of laboriousness and heaviness, especially because something is distasteful ("the onerous task of cleaning up the mess"). Burdensome suggests something which causes mental as well as physical strain ("the burdensome responsibilities of being a supervisor"). Oppressive implies extreme harshness or severity in what is imposed ("the oppressive tyranny of a police state"). Exacting suggests rigor or sternness rather than tyranny or injustice in the demands made or in the one demanding ("an exacting employer who requires great attention to detail").